CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN
''LA COSTA PERDIDA''
JANUARY 22 2013
43:04
1. Come Down The Coast/4:07
2. Too High For The Love-In/5:39
3. You Got To Roll/4:07
4. Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out/5:16
5. Peaches In The Summertime/2:10
6. Northern California Girls/7:17
7. Summer Days/5:37
8. La Costa Perdida/4:18
9. Aged In Wood/1:03
10. A Love For All Time/3:30
11. Come Down The Coast (Acoustic Demo)/4:31
12. My Invisible Car/3:38
David Barbe /Percussion
Payton Bradford /Vocals (Background)
Thomas Johnson /Vocals (Background)
Carter King /Vocals (Background)
Alex Kroh /Percussion
Victor Krummenacher /Bass, Guitar (Baritone)
Greg Lisher /Guitar
Dennis Love /Vocals (Background)
David Lowery /Guitar, Vocals
Brannen Miles /Vocals (Background)
Hardy Morris /Vocals (Background)
Sanna Olsson /Vocals (Background)
Peach Boys /Vocals (Background)
Chris Pedersen /Drums
Jonathan Segel /Guitar, Mandolin, Organ, Violin, Vocals (Background)
Ansley Stewart /Vocals (Background)
Michael Urbano /Drums, Percussion
Velena Vego /Vocals (Background)
Daniel Womack /Vocals (Background)
REVIEW
by James Christopher Monger A hastily signed, well-worn postcard from the group’s Northern California haunts of Redlands, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco, La Costa Perdida, the eighth studio album from consistently unclassifiable freak-rock pioneers Camper Van Beethoven, plays fast and loose with the band’s mythology. Steeped in a hazy patina of Post-Laurel Canyon, ratty boot cut jeans, and barefoot, Pacific Ocean Americana, CVB's first album since 2004’s New Roman Times is willfully homespun, rough around the edges, and crackly as a campfire full of pine branches, roaches, junk mail, and empty tall boys. Boasting a well-seasoned crew in David Lowery, Victor Krummenacher, Jonathan Segal, Greg Lisher, Chris Pedersen, and Michael Urbano), La Costa Perdida flies highest when it’s high-fiving its fan base. Stand-out cuts like “Peaches in the Summertime” and the Tejano-tinged title cut will please the old guard; the quietly propulsive “Come Down the Coast” and the sweetly psychedelic “Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out” will appeal to fans of the group’s Virgin Records era (Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, Key Lime Pie), and the gritty “Too High for the Love-In” and the subversively epic “Northern California Girls” should satiate Cracker fanatics, resulting in one of the year’s most idiosyncratic releases. Depending on your predilection, it will either bore the crap out of you, pass on by like a rest stop without a vending machine, or reignite the flame for a band that has always celebrated, as Lowery sings on 1989's "All Her Favorite Fruit," the “fecundity of life and love.”
BIOGRAPHY
by Denise Sullivan
Back in the day, before alternative rock was invented and indie rock was still shy of roots music and other folk elements, Camper Van Beethoven's merging of punk, folk, ska, and world music was truly a revelation. Singer/songwriter David Lowery's smart-aleck lyrics, delivered in laid-back California style, combined with Jonathan Segel's violin as lead instrument, were the band's instant trademarks. Twenty years after its inception, CVB sound is still remarkably fresh and their influence on alternative music undeniable and resounding.
Self-described as "surrealist absurdist folk," the group had its beginnings in the summer of 1983 when Lowery and boyhood friend Victor Krummenacher (bass) started playing music together around Riverside and Redlands, California. Upon relocating to the Northern California college town of Santa Cruz, they enlisted friends Chris Pedersen (drums) and Chris Molla (guitar) to join the fold; Greg Lisher (guitar) and Jonathan Segel (violins, keyboards, mandolin) were added in 1985, and collectively they created a repertoire built on acoustic and electric, traditional and punky aesthetics. The reissue of the band's self-released 1985 debut, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, which included their signature song, "Take the Skinheads Bowling," made the Top Ten in the 1986 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll, as did their second album, the confusingly titled II & III, along with their self-titled third album, both released in 1986. In addition to the punk and ska, II & III dabbled in lo-fi sounds, with touches of country (as in the original, "Sad Lovers Waltz" and the twangy cover of Sonic Youth's "I Love Her All the Time"). The band's forte was its ability to switch styles, from Balkan folk to psychedelic rock on alternate takes and sometimes even within the same song!
The third album, Camper Van Beethoven, continued the thread, as blueprint CVB tracks like "Joe Stalin's Cadillac" and "Good Guys and Bad Guys" fused punk-inspired looseness with more sophisticated melody and rhythm patterns. At the same time, they were blowing minds and ears with their prog rock leanings (check their nearly note-perfect version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive"). By the time of their Virgin Records debut (coinciding with the label's U.S. re-launch in 1988), the band took a more serious tack for its fourth album, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. With Molla gone by then, the group was officially a five-piece, though a cadre of friends assisted them at recording sessions, including producer Dennis Herring (eventually, touring guitarist David Immerglück, later of Counting Crows, became an honorary sixth member). Stretching out in larger studio facilities and experimenting with sound, Sweetheart was the first CVB release met with mixed critical response. Following the elegiac Key Lime Pie and amid creative and personal strife, the band (then featuring female fiddler Morgan Fichter in place of Segel) called it a night in 1989.
In the '90s, Krummenacher, Pedersen, and Lisher (with Immerglück) continued to play together in Monks of Doom, a mostly instrumental prog rock concern, as well as in other formations that sometimes included Segel. Segel released three albums as Hieronymous Firebrain from 1990-1994 and two with Jack & Jill for the Magnetic label. In 2005 he collaborated with Dina Emerson in Chaos Butterfly. Krummenacher has released six solo albums and has collaborated with Eugene Chadbourne, Bruce Kaphan, and members of Tarnation among others, also released through Magnetic. Lisher has two self-released solo albums to his credit. In the wake of the band's dissolution, Lowery formed Cracker, by far the most successful of the post-Camper ventures; it served as a vehicle to keep him on the road as well as a way to keep Camper's name in circulation, though he kept a distance from his bandmates and left California for Richmond, Virginia.
By 1999, Krummenacher, Segel, and Lowery were reunited while compiling an unorthodox rarities collection, Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead: Long Live Camper Van Beethoven, a mash-up of rare cuts utilizing the band's back catalog. In 2002, they officially issued their song-for-song version of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, recorded on a lark in 1987. In the process of reissuing and archiving, the original members (sans Pedersen) quietly reunited for a handful of live shows and began work on a new batch of songs. In 2004 they released New Roman Times (a concept album about a Texas teen who joins the military then leaves ranks to join an anti-government militia) featuring all-original members including Pedersen on drums and original guitarist Molla sitting in. In 2008 Cooking Vinyl released Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty, a collection of fan favorites, followed by an all new studio album, La Costa Perdida, in 2013. CVB continue to tour, often in support of alternative acts who've followed in their groundbreaking indie rock footprints.
''LA COSTA PERDIDA''
JANUARY 22 2013
43:04
1. Come Down The Coast/4:07
2. Too High For The Love-In/5:39
3. You Got To Roll/4:07
4. Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out/5:16
5. Peaches In The Summertime/2:10
6. Northern California Girls/7:17
7. Summer Days/5:37
8. La Costa Perdida/4:18
9. Aged In Wood/1:03
10. A Love For All Time/3:30
11. Come Down The Coast (Acoustic Demo)/4:31
12. My Invisible Car/3:38
David Barbe /Percussion
Payton Bradford /Vocals (Background)
Thomas Johnson /Vocals (Background)
Carter King /Vocals (Background)
Alex Kroh /Percussion
Victor Krummenacher /Bass, Guitar (Baritone)
Greg Lisher /Guitar
Dennis Love /Vocals (Background)
David Lowery /Guitar, Vocals
Brannen Miles /Vocals (Background)
Hardy Morris /Vocals (Background)
Sanna Olsson /Vocals (Background)
Peach Boys /Vocals (Background)
Chris Pedersen /Drums
Jonathan Segel /Guitar, Mandolin, Organ, Violin, Vocals (Background)
Ansley Stewart /Vocals (Background)
Michael Urbano /Drums, Percussion
Velena Vego /Vocals (Background)
Daniel Womack /Vocals (Background)
REVIEW
by James Christopher Monger A hastily signed, well-worn postcard from the group’s Northern California haunts of Redlands, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco, La Costa Perdida, the eighth studio album from consistently unclassifiable freak-rock pioneers Camper Van Beethoven, plays fast and loose with the band’s mythology. Steeped in a hazy patina of Post-Laurel Canyon, ratty boot cut jeans, and barefoot, Pacific Ocean Americana, CVB's first album since 2004’s New Roman Times is willfully homespun, rough around the edges, and crackly as a campfire full of pine branches, roaches, junk mail, and empty tall boys. Boasting a well-seasoned crew in David Lowery, Victor Krummenacher, Jonathan Segal, Greg Lisher, Chris Pedersen, and Michael Urbano), La Costa Perdida flies highest when it’s high-fiving its fan base. Stand-out cuts like “Peaches in the Summertime” and the Tejano-tinged title cut will please the old guard; the quietly propulsive “Come Down the Coast” and the sweetly psychedelic “Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out” will appeal to fans of the group’s Virgin Records era (Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, Key Lime Pie), and the gritty “Too High for the Love-In” and the subversively epic “Northern California Girls” should satiate Cracker fanatics, resulting in one of the year’s most idiosyncratic releases. Depending on your predilection, it will either bore the crap out of you, pass on by like a rest stop without a vending machine, or reignite the flame for a band that has always celebrated, as Lowery sings on 1989's "All Her Favorite Fruit," the “fecundity of life and love.”
BIOGRAPHY
by Denise Sullivan
Back in the day, before alternative rock was invented and indie rock was still shy of roots music and other folk elements, Camper Van Beethoven's merging of punk, folk, ska, and world music was truly a revelation. Singer/songwriter David Lowery's smart-aleck lyrics, delivered in laid-back California style, combined with Jonathan Segel's violin as lead instrument, were the band's instant trademarks. Twenty years after its inception, CVB sound is still remarkably fresh and their influence on alternative music undeniable and resounding.
Self-described as "surrealist absurdist folk," the group had its beginnings in the summer of 1983 when Lowery and boyhood friend Victor Krummenacher (bass) started playing music together around Riverside and Redlands, California. Upon relocating to the Northern California college town of Santa Cruz, they enlisted friends Chris Pedersen (drums) and Chris Molla (guitar) to join the fold; Greg Lisher (guitar) and Jonathan Segel (violins, keyboards, mandolin) were added in 1985, and collectively they created a repertoire built on acoustic and electric, traditional and punky aesthetics. The reissue of the band's self-released 1985 debut, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, which included their signature song, "Take the Skinheads Bowling," made the Top Ten in the 1986 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll, as did their second album, the confusingly titled II & III, along with their self-titled third album, both released in 1986. In addition to the punk and ska, II & III dabbled in lo-fi sounds, with touches of country (as in the original, "Sad Lovers Waltz" and the twangy cover of Sonic Youth's "I Love Her All the Time"). The band's forte was its ability to switch styles, from Balkan folk to psychedelic rock on alternate takes and sometimes even within the same song!
The third album, Camper Van Beethoven, continued the thread, as blueprint CVB tracks like "Joe Stalin's Cadillac" and "Good Guys and Bad Guys" fused punk-inspired looseness with more sophisticated melody and rhythm patterns. At the same time, they were blowing minds and ears with their prog rock leanings (check their nearly note-perfect version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive"). By the time of their Virgin Records debut (coinciding with the label's U.S. re-launch in 1988), the band took a more serious tack for its fourth album, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. With Molla gone by then, the group was officially a five-piece, though a cadre of friends assisted them at recording sessions, including producer Dennis Herring (eventually, touring guitarist David Immerglück, later of Counting Crows, became an honorary sixth member). Stretching out in larger studio facilities and experimenting with sound, Sweetheart was the first CVB release met with mixed critical response. Following the elegiac Key Lime Pie and amid creative and personal strife, the band (then featuring female fiddler Morgan Fichter in place of Segel) called it a night in 1989.
In the '90s, Krummenacher, Pedersen, and Lisher (with Immerglück) continued to play together in Monks of Doom, a mostly instrumental prog rock concern, as well as in other formations that sometimes included Segel. Segel released three albums as Hieronymous Firebrain from 1990-1994 and two with Jack & Jill for the Magnetic label. In 2005 he collaborated with Dina Emerson in Chaos Butterfly. Krummenacher has released six solo albums and has collaborated with Eugene Chadbourne, Bruce Kaphan, and members of Tarnation among others, also released through Magnetic. Lisher has two self-released solo albums to his credit. In the wake of the band's dissolution, Lowery formed Cracker, by far the most successful of the post-Camper ventures; it served as a vehicle to keep him on the road as well as a way to keep Camper's name in circulation, though he kept a distance from his bandmates and left California for Richmond, Virginia.
By 1999, Krummenacher, Segel, and Lowery were reunited while compiling an unorthodox rarities collection, Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead: Long Live Camper Van Beethoven, a mash-up of rare cuts utilizing the band's back catalog. In 2002, they officially issued their song-for-song version of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, recorded on a lark in 1987. In the process of reissuing and archiving, the original members (sans Pedersen) quietly reunited for a handful of live shows and began work on a new batch of songs. In 2004 they released New Roman Times (a concept album about a Texas teen who joins the military then leaves ranks to join an anti-government militia) featuring all-original members including Pedersen on drums and original guitarist Molla sitting in. In 2008 Cooking Vinyl released Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty, a collection of fan favorites, followed by an all new studio album, La Costa Perdida, in 2013. CVB continue to tour, often in support of alternative acts who've followed in their groundbreaking indie rock footprints.
