Velvet Crush - Free Expression

Let's be kind and rewind to the sweeping rock-pop-country fusion of Velvet Crush's 1999 release, 'Free Expression'? This new Deluxe Edition of 'Free Expression' has been fully remastered, and includes a second disc of an album's worth of demo recordings, *including several unreleased songs*, new liner notes written by the band, and previously unseen period photographs from the archives. In 1997 Velvet Crush seemingly faded from the American pop scene. Exhausted from two straight years spent cramped in the back of a van touring the United States and Europe, and creatively depleted from the frustration of trying to record a follow up to their highly-acclaimed "Teenage Symphonies To God" album, the band finally imploded after a particularly sordid tour of Spain, it's members dispersing to various parts of the United States to lick their wounds, pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. But it didn't end there. After a period of recuperation and some enthusiastic response from Japan for their "difficult" third album "Heavy Changes", the group's principal members Paul Chastain and Ric Menck made the crucial decision to reconvien and record once again, "just like in the old days", with their friend Matthew Sweet, at his home studio in Los Angeles, Ca. The resulting album, called "Free Expression" because of the band's newfound sense of freedom for recording without restraint from record label or management intervention, re-establishes everything great about the band in the first place -- short, crisp pop songs layered with alternately crunchy and chiming guitars, warm blankets of harmony vocals, an occasional dusty pedal steel guitar, Ric Menck's trademark power smack drumming, and the distinctive graininess of Paul Chastain's baritone lead vocal. Reviewers responded with unexpected enthusiasm, and although the band refused to tour in support of the album, they were obviously back on track creatively, and continued releasing new albums and reissuing older material on their own Action Musik label.

Factory sealed.