Letters, We Get Letters, We Get Sacks and Sacks of Letters....

So some days I really love my phony baloney job.

Case in point: When I got the following e-mail recently.

Hi Steve, Hope you are safe & sound.

I'm writing about a June 1st release from my 15 year old daughter, Juniper.

It’s quite an unusual album, both in its sound and creation.

Most of the songs are by me (or her & me), but we asked some friends to write for us and got songs from:

Tommy Dunbar (Rubinoos) & Kyle Vincent
Kim Shattuck (the Muffs) & Lisa Marr
Francis Macdonald (Teenage Fanclub).

And we got a lot of our friends to play on the recordings, including:

Marshall Crenshaw
Dennis Diken (Smithereens)
Chris Geddes (Belle & Sebastian)
Jay Gonzalez (Drive By Truckers)
Steve Goulding (Mekons, Nick Lowe, etc)
Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo)
Chris Collingwood (Fountains of Wayne)
Mark Spencer (Son Volt)
Greg Townson (Los Straitjackets)

So, the record has a story.

And it really sounds unusual, because of her voice and the unique mix of punky/poppy songs, and the basement/kitchen sink production style – which is reverent of ‘60s & ‘70s pop, but not anachronistically so.

Okay, as you may imagine, that got my attention.

And then I listened to a single from the album, which had been released previously...



...and decided that heck yeah -- it was absolutely delightful.

And then I listened to another one -- "Everybody's Got a Crush on Chad"...



...and realized, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this kid is a freaking star who's just made one of the albums of the year. Seriously, there isn't a less than fabulous track on the whole thing.

So go to Bandcamp HERE or Spotify and be a patron of the arts, you bastids. This kind of creativity deserves your support.

POSTSCRIPT: If the title to this post doesn't ring a bell, it's from a request segment on the old Perry Como show that was one of my favorite things when I was a pre-teenager.



Yes, I'm incredibly old.

Have a great weekend, everybody!!!