CYNICS – LIVING IS THE BEST REVENGE – GET HIP CD

Goodness me we still have some copies of this killer CD from 2002. This is what Popmatters said about it when it was released.

In the early ’80s, when the Cynics formed a band to essentially commemorate the garage aesthetic, they might have thought that their career would likely be as marginal as the bands they sought to imitate. After all, as a celebration of grandiose ambitions and certain failure, the taste for garage was pure camp, which inherently limits the music’s appeal to a certain cognoscenti. In this case, those few pasty male record store denizens who might actually have had access to the once impossibly rare original garage sides, which generally turned up only on semi-bootleg compilations released with very limited distribution. The early Cynics records, with their careful reconstruction of a primitive, dated sound, and with their careful choice of superb rarities to cover, were basically made for an elite club of knowing record collectors whose hearts were warmed by the idea of a band eschewing trends (and mainstream success) by throwing themselves back to a time that seemed to precede trendiness.

Living Is The Best Revenge picks up where all of the previous albums left off. They still maintain a rigorous, almost academic fidelity to the precepts of fuzzy guitars, a few simple chords, two-or-three-note riffs, whiny vocals and lyrics that confront the garage rocker’s once inevitable reject-hood by alternating between broken-hearted lamenting (“Let Me Know”) and a desire for revenge (“Revenge”).

Turn Me Loose 3:09
Making Deals 2:37
Marianne 2:46
The Tone 1:50
Ballad Of J.C. Holmes 3:02
She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own) 4:22
Revenge 2:26
I Got Time 2:43
Let Me Know 3:13
You’ve Never Had It Better 2:04
Last Day 2:36
Shine 5:52

Release Date:

Format: CD Album

All music: Garage Punk / Frat Punk - New Garage