Wounded Lion "s/t," "Friendly" ep

(In The Red) By mistake I caught this band live the other night and they are genuinely one of my new favorite bands in the world. Dynamic percussion (great drumming supplemented by a extra floor tom, maracas, and tambourines being attacked by any band member whose current stage location [lotsa intrument rotating going on] leaves him with an extra limb) elevates things that sound like pop, noise, and other stuff to the level of "G-R-O-O-V-E." The best thing about the band is that they don't sound like anything -- I can't really compare them with milepost bands, as they were truly original and thrilling. The worst thing about the band is that they apparantly had not figured out this formula when they recorded the LP. It is still really good, and there's blasts of brilliance, noise, pop, strangeness, humor, and Star Wars, but it didn't feel as special as the band I saw. A much better representation is the 7", which oddly is dated earlier than the album, but has a lead song that has all the weird percussive, absolutely original glory of the live set, and two covers (a Wild Man Fisher tune and a cover of the Misfits theoretically covering Creedence Clearwater Revival) that instead of becoming the record collection cleverness excercizes they seem to be on paper actually deliver powerful hoodoo.