Product Description

Simple, shimmering, and lovely, the Boston band Galaxie 500made three excellent albums of dreamy guitar-pop during itsshort tenure in the late-1980s indie underground. TODAY, released in 1988, is the trio's first album and it establishesa musical blueprint from which the three rarely deviated, and with good cause. A steady bassline, spare, propulsive drums, and a simple three-chord progression--all this crests beneath lead singer Dean Wareham's distant lilt, and works magic on tracks like the heavily Velvet Underground-esque "Pictures", the bouncy "Oblivious", and the majestic closer "Tugboat", the band's first single. (The excellent b-side, "King of Spain", is included on the Ryko CD reissue.)
It's also important to note the band's brilliantly embellished coverof Jonathan Richman's a capella obscurity "Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste", as it established Galaxie 500's talent forplaying covers in a way that claimed the songs as their ownand, in the process, extracted a previously unknown beauty from the work. The band's other two studio albums, FIRE and THIS IS OUR MUSIC, are both essential, and all of them make for a fine place to start. Of course, the beginning is as fine a place as any.

Track Listing

1. Flowers
2. Pictures
3. Parking Lot
4. Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
5. Temperature's Rising
6. Oblivious
7. It's Getting Late
8. Instrumental
9. Tugboat
10. King Of Spain
11. Crazy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36129 in Music
• Released on: 1997-04-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Customer Reviews

boss fuzz action
thurston moore rated it his fave guitar lp of '88, and the competition was stiff & noisy - pixies, dinosaur jr, s.youth themselves - boston's galaxie 500 eschewed the top volume feedback of their peers in favour of dynamics - that's right pop pickers, they actually went quiet AND loud IN THE SAME SONG, which for 1988 was truly the stuff of daring. their debut '33 "Today" released in UK on Shimmy Disk was for my money their best - sounded like they'd tuned their instruments down about 3 whole tones and had slowed down the reel to reel to walking pace - but they had the songs by golly. "flowers" has the best guitar solo in the world ever - simply explodes off the vinyl (sorry to be a old timer but this HAS to be listened to for optimum lo-fi enjoyment on a £99 midi stereo turntable), jonathan richman cover "don't let our youth.." rumbles and erupts 3 minutes in, and all the way through they prove one of those rare bands whose separate components - guitar, bas and drums - can all be listened to in their own right at top profit. A groovy name to drop nowadays, 'tis true, but for once they've got the tunes to bear it out. and with only 3 albums, 2 gettable singles and a posthumous live CD on the roster they're a must for muso completists. this is the best of a faultless body of work. buy buy buy.

I just wanna be your tugboat.
I heard On Fire first and immediately bought Today to hear some more. On Fire is their most accompished work, but this has the best songs. Tugboat is so yearning, beautiful and yet relentless and exciting. They do Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste as if only they know how it should have been done.
I was lucky enough to see Galaxie 500 supporting The Sundays. I'd rather see them live again than any of the bands around at that time, including The Pixies.
I'll stick my neck out and say that although their influences where worn on their sleeves, they transended them and made something very special.
Buy Today, listen to Tugboat over and over again, if you think you wasted your money - I'll refund you.

the best trio in the world
this debut album is very very good, it sounds wonderful, three instruments and a voice, im not a big fan of guitar solo's but this album has some of the most understated and lovely ones since george or sterling, this isnt quite as good as the velvets third album but more people should have heard of it by now. i hope you like it.