Thee Retail Simps – Live on Cool Street LP Total Punk

“After countless hours of data driven market research it was determined that the wild success of the first Retail Simps album, Reverberant Scratch was 82.6% due to the cheeky and iconic album cover, as such the group was faced with a dilemma. Using focus groups funded by the Center for Odd Human Behaviour (COHB), the group surmised that the man pictured on said cover, none other than Montreal born chanteur Joe Chamandi, reminded the typical unsophisticated commoner of their ner’e do well uncle, and it is this sense of uncanny familiarity that drove people to purchase the record. Upon first needle drop it was revealed to house an abhorrent and obfuscatingly decrepit take on roots rock. Armed with this keen analytical knowledge, the band and their creative team harnessed the boundless marketability of the Trashmen, Dancing Cigarettes and 2 Live Crew to adorn their new disc with an equally palatable and deceptive frontal armour, provoking the straight-laced garage rocker of yore to pay the price of entry. Once the branding and visual identity of this little package invited potential listeners in, they were met with incorrigible confusion. You see, after being pigeonholed by the punk paparazzi as a lowly party band, the Simps were tasked with driving home their knack for fervent versatility. This new record captures a group, in the clutches of maturity, boasting their emotional depth, triumphant chops and humble servitude to the trade of rock n roll clowning. Recalling the double speak of VU’s murder mystery, the soul bent lament of Fred Cole and the bastardized funk of Minutemen, the Simps have thusly widened their sonic palate and created yet another masterpiece of the modern age. This is the southern soul of Memphian tradesmen flipped on it’s snowy head, conjuring an impure regionalism that was largely thought to be dead and gone. An alternate kind of Northern Soul with a frosty Arctic sheen. More spazzed out guitar, more howling lunacy, more heat of the moment, turnt poetry and outside the box-isms. ‘The Simpies have done it again!’ Proclaim the industrial-indie-music-complex! Bolstered by the angelic croon of theee Simpettes and the honking heart-wrench of theee Horny Boys, Theee Retail Simpletones bring you this 82.5 % Total Punk din!”