The 81s w/ Luella— Everything Wrong Is Absolutely Perfect

As basic as the music is, it isn’t. Three songs in and I had a string of notes citing Velvet Underground, The B-52s, Big Brother & The Holding Company, sixties garage and punk. The 81s are brash, retro and futuristic with sidesteps to brilliance, the lead guitar sloppy but immaculate, the bass and drums primordial and driving. Which is enough, but Luella’s petulant little girl voice over the bluesy rhythm guitar and tasty lead on “My Shoes” has me digging deeper, searching for lines like “I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue” in just the right places and listening for that guitar sound which seems to be perfect but always changing. I’ve been searching for a few weeks now. It is an adventure.

I wrote that at the behest of Adam Dawson who had just begun working with The 81s w/ Luella. Give me something, he said, and I dashed it off in two minutes and emailed it before I could change it. I call it a brain fart (not a derogatory term). Nothing more than writing without thinking, it affords me an opportunity to not overthink which is what I usually do. My buddy Mike Marino writes articles and even has a book out— all brain farts and stream of consciousness— and I dig his style. What you read is what you get. I wish I could sustain mine for more than a few sentences. Still and all, the few sentences did just fine here. It describes precisely how I felt about The 81s w/ Luella. And feel.

The 81s w/ Luella is to me an adventure. Combining an early Velvet Underground sensitivity with the instrumentation and feel of the odder rock side of the late-sixties (and early-sixties, a la Luella’s rockabilly vibe) is a natural. It is attitude rock (though not punk). It is choogling rock (though not CCR-style). It is at times bluesy, though not too bluesy, and dark, though not too dark. It is minimalist rock, which is great because it works perfectly with Luella’s voice. The more I hear them, the more I like them.

I worked at Peaches Records in Seattle beginning in 1978 and continuing through the eighties. The kids I worked with kept me informed of the good stuff— the new and under the radar artists which soon became not the mainstream but the spearhead of rock music. The Blasters. XTC. The Lyres. The Three O’Clock. 54-40. Some did very well, others struggled to survive, but they were most of them impressive. I will be very interested to see how the youth relate to The 81s. I am not saying the music is groundbreaking but I am enthralled. In my mind’s eye, I see those same kids, kids no longer I am sure, putting this on the turntable. They loved stuff like this.  And they seldom led me wrong.

Did I mention the sound of the guitars? I should have. Damn! That’s good stuff!