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What are you doing here? You're just a kid...
It's my damn business must have thought Peter Searcy, a provincial kid not even twenty, who along with his friends (Davis Grubbs, Brian MacMahan, Ethan Buckler, Britt Walford) started the band Squirrel Bait, which sounds like a hyperactive Husker Du with Milo Aukerman on vocals. No sensationalism, please, we're changing the tune, this is not Mentana: nothing new under the sun, melodious Hardcore set on the path of the Indies, all quite forgettable if it weren't for the fact that the songs are beautiful and that's the beauty of it: enjoying the world's fruits without settling for less.
"Skag Heaven", their rushed masterpiece, was released in 1987 by Homestead after the self-titled EP of '85. Ten songs for twenty-five minutes of pure lyrical and melodic joy, with accelerations and slowdowns, screeching guitars, and stifled vocals, which make hardcore mature and render them as important for the future fortune of music as Dinosaur Jr and Pixies. But, as we know: one hand washes the other, bad luck washes both, and eventually, you're forgotten.
No anecdotes to tell, no confidences, just a lot of bad luck and a lot of music (truth be told, not much), but bad luck is tiresome to tell, and the music is better to listen to. Then the paths diverge each going its own way, ending up playing in other groups, maybe powerful and important, maybe useless... but that's another story.
Squirrel Bait, Ladies and Gentlemen: let your radiant ears enjoy.
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Other reviews
By kloo
Skag Heaven is the mausoleum of post-rock, it’s the tombstone of old-school hardcore.
Squirrel Bait are THE most central nerve band of hardcore, not the best, not the most innovative but the most centralized.
By Nevadagaz
Skag Heaven lasts only 25 minutes and 45 seconds, but it’s so intense it makes even the gorillas in Burundi pale.
No record from that period encapsulates the spirit of American hardcore in a more concentrated and perfected form than Skag Heaven.
