hereis the NFO file from Indietorrents
Artist : 3Ds
Album : The Venus Trail
Source :
Year : 1994
Genre :
Encoder : Unknown
Codec : LAME 3.97
Bitrate : VBR ~243K/s 44100Hz Joint Stereo
ID3-Tag : ID3v2.3
Unwittingly my first Flying Nun record when this came out on Merge in the US and I saw them open for Pavement for Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I have never gotten tired of Beautiful Things or The Golden Grove.
your blog sez:
I remember getting this on CD back in 1993, playing it quite a lot, but never really getting too excited about it. There’s something about overkill in a genre. By 1993, grungy noise pop was everywhere. You couldn’t sit down for the damn stuff. Sonic Youth, The Pixies, British Shoegaze and then Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the whole alternative scene exploding into the mainstream meant that a pretty good homegrown album like The Venus Trail suddenly seemed run-of-the-mill in terms of its histrionic aesthetics. It’s not of course. Listening to it now, way out of context is to rediscover the magic of The 3Ds, and to note to oneself just how unique a sound the band had developed for themselves. But when you’re swamped earlobe-deep in the stuff it can start to feel like a trap.
1993 was a strange year for me—it almost qualifies as the best and worst year of my life. It was in the last few months, having moved back to Dunedin –home to the 3Ds – that I remember listening to The Venus Trail. They were strange days, adjusting to a new job, new flatmates, new girlfriend, and new 3Ds album. Aesthetically, The Venus Trail is pretty similar to what’s gone before – catchy tunes drowned in wild freewheelin’ riffs, distortion and feedback, but lyrically it’s impossible to discern what the songs are about. The voices are just too buried in the mix and ultimately this leaves me feeling the album’s just not as satisfying as it could’ve been.
As I listen, I shall attempt to delineate something of the mood of each song from the dynamics, rhythm and whatever snippets of lyrics I can grasp that might give further clues as to why the songs exist. Mostly, I can say however, that ‘sad’ or ‘bittersweet melancholy’ prevails across the course of these twelve songs. It’s almost like, no matter how hard they try to burst through the skin of a despairing emotion with dynamic guitar theatrics, the overwhelming weight of whatever it is they’re singing about just drags them back down.
Track Listing
————-
1. Hey Suess (2:22)
2. Philadelphia Rising (4:50)
3. Cash None (3:08)
4. The Golden Grove (2:45)
5. The Venus Trail (2:12)
6. Beautiful Things (3:36)
7. Man On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (4:07)
8. Jane Air (3:08)
9. The Young And The Restless (3:18)
10. Summer Stone (2:40)
11. Ice (6:05)
12. Spooky (4:54)
Total Playing Time: 43:10 (min:sec)
Total Size : 73.5 MB (77,071,602 bytes)