{"id":23039,"date":"2022-05-26T05:30:21","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T09:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23039"},"modified":"2022-05-31T10:44:00","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T14:44:00","slug":"album-review-svt-always-comes-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/26\/album-review-svt-always-comes-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: SVT — Always Comes Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As I\u2019ve mentioned before, SVT is the band most often named among those interviewed for my latest book as the Bay Area band most deserving of greater success than they found. With a sound that touched on new wave, punk and power pop and featured the extraordinarily talented Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna) on bass, SVT was muscular, tuneful and compelling.<\/p>\n

As the saying goes, they shoulda been contenders. But for a number of reasons, the band never truly took off or caught the attention of a wider audience outside San Francisco and its environs, and its members all went on to other pursuits (or in the case of songwriter, guitarist and focal point Brian Marnell, died).<\/p>\n

In the group\u2019s comparatively short time together, SVT released two singles (one self-released, another on 415 Records); an EP, Extended Play<\/i>, also on 415; and an album, 1981\u2019s No Regrets<\/i>, released on the short-lived MSI label. All of those records have long been out of print. In late 2020, Liberation Hall \u2013 in cooperation with SVT keyboardist Nick Buck \u2013 sorted out knotty rights and licensing issues and compiled all of the aforementioned material into a CD, Always Comes Back<\/i>. Titled after one of DVT\u2019s strongest songs, Always Comes Back<\/i> brought this criminally overlooked band\u2019s work back for 21st<\/sup> century listeners.<\/p>\n

(And on a personal note, learning about SVT and speaking with Casady for a magazine article led directly to the writing of my second book.)<\/p>\n

More than four decades after the band\u2019s demise, all of its surviving members speak passionately about the music they made. And with good reason: though some may quibble about perceived shortcomings in the mix of some of the band\u2019s songs \u2013 they were uncompromisingly LOUD in the studio, making nuance difficult to capture \u2013 there\u2019s no denying the power, passion and intensity in SVT\u2019s music. The team behind the Liberation Hall release has done what it could with modern-day technology to improve the audio quality (without altering it), and truth be told, it all sounds just fine.<\/p>\n

These days, as most everyone who\u2019s interested well knows, there are serious bottlenecks in vinyl record production. When the vinyl era supposedly ended in the late \u201880s and very early \u201890s, nearly every domestic pressing plant shut down or retooled for CDs. And when the vinyl resurgence happened, there was no way to satisfy demand. Today it\u2019s routine for an artist to have to wait several months for their album to be pressed onto 12\u201d vinyl, where a CD can be turned around in a matter of days.<\/p>\n

As a practical matter, that means one of two things. Either an album\u2019s CD and\/or digital release is held back until the vinyl version is ready, or the vinyl release follows the CD by some months. Neither is desirable from the perspective of the artist (or their label, if they have one).<\/p>\n

\"\"

image courtesy Nick Buck<\/p><\/div>\n

And so it is the case with SVT\u2019s Always Comes Back<\/i>: a new 2LP version of the album is now available, some 18 months after its CD counterpart. Put yourself in the position of the label and artist: it\u2019s hard to get coverage (reviews etc.) for an album that\u2019s already been out a year and a half; too often, publications look upon it as old news. But Liberation Hall hall has done something special to make this vinyl configuration noteworthy, newsworthy and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 worthy of your attention and purchase.<\/p>\n

Where the CD included all 21 of the tracks from those singles, the EP and album, the vinyl version — in a reversal of convention — adds<\/em> three more songs unavailable on CD. Dating from the earliest days of the group (specifically 1978), \u201cSnow Gorilla,\u201d \u201cSex Attraction\u201d and \u201cHow Could You Ever\u201d are credited to The Jack Casady Band, as the group was briefly known prior to renaming itself after Casady\u2019s bass amp head.<\/p>\n

These songs document a band still in the process of developing its sonic personality. There\u2019s a wide-screen, grand sweeping approach to the Buck-composed instrumental \u201cSnow Gorilla.\u201d It bears little of the powerpop character of the band\u2019s later work, but it\u2019s still a compelling work. A lead line sounding uncannily like electric violin* (but more likely Buck on synthesizer)<\/span> engages in musical dialogue with Marnell\u2019s lead guitar. [*UPDATE: Nick Buck tells me that the distinctive tones are actually overtones from Casady’s bass guitar<\/strong>!]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSex Attraction\u201d is closer in style and spirit to the SVT that Bay Area fans would come to know. It\u2019s uptempo and rocking, and hints at the sharp edge of the band\u2019s subsequent material. Casady\u2019s thunderous bass anchors the sound.<\/p>\n

Somewhat oddly, Always Comes Back<\/i> is sequenced in reverse chronological order, working its way across four sides of vinyl from 1981 back to \u201878. And so it ends with these Jack Casady Band tracks, the last of which is the most like later SVT. Marnell\u2019s \u201cHow Could You Ever\u201d is a quick and speedy number, putting across all of the (possibly) pilled-up energy one would have experienced seeing the band onstage at the Mabuhay Gardens.<\/p>\n

Blowing by in under 90 seconds, in its own way \u201cHow Could You Ever\u201d is the track most emblematic of SVT as a whole: it\u2019s energetic, thrilling, catchy\u2026 and it\u2019s over too soon.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/b> If you\u2019ve read this far, you\u2019ll want to know about The Price of Sex<\/i><\/a>, a new DVD featuring SVT as well. And then of course there\u2019s the band\u2019s full story in my book<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve mentioned before, SVT is the band most often named among those interviewed for my latest book as the Bay Area band most deserving of greater success than they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49,50,55,59,62,65],"tags":[4390,1072,4394],"class_list":["post-23039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-new-wave","category-powerpop","category-punk","category-rawk","category-review","tag-415-records","tag-jack-casady","tag-svt","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-50-id","cat-55-id","cat-59-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23039"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23064,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23039\/revisions\/23064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}