Introducing Captain Missouri

When I think of rock music from Ohio, I think of the likes of Pere Ubu, Trent Reznor and Guided By Voices. I now get to add to the list Captain Missouri of the duo Brain. Captain Missouri is a lo-fi rock musician out of Cincinnati and along with C. Russell Lewis make up Brain. But for this review, we’ll be focusing on Captain Missouri’s latest release Taxidermy on the netlabel Eye Machine Recordings.

Taxidermy is poor in recording, poor in execution, poor in playing and poor in singing. All of these poor attributes make the ten-song twenty-minute EP so worthwhile to listen to. Captain Missouri taps into the rawness of rock music with songs that grate and surprise shunning the English influxes of Guided By Voices and instead looking to the Appalachian Mountains for inspiration. The coarseness of the recordings is matched note for note with the rough guitar playing and, at times, tricked-out lyrics.

Every once and a while, we must turn our gaze from the computer screen and look to rock’n'roll for our musical nourishment. Captain Missouri’s Taxidermy does two things for me. First it makes me want to listen to all of his work and that of Eye Machine Recordings. And, lastly, it reminds me that rock is not all corporate crap, but at it’s finest, kids playing out of their garages.

Artist: Captain Missouri
Title: Taxidermy
Netlabel: Eye Machine Recordings
Released: 28-May-2012
Download mp3: zip
CC BY-SA