Little Stevie McCabe - 'Sweat it Out'

Been a bit. So, here's some more music from the darkest depths of my collection...

I really don't know too much about this one, other than it's fairly bizarre. The download I snagged was from the long-gone (but awesome) Decrepit Tapes blog, and that link is no longer functioning. It apparently comes from 1986. This guy (Little Stevie) has some connection to the lo-fi scene in New Zealand (groups like The Dead C and The 3Ds) and played/plays(??) in a group called Axemen, which is described as 'Half Japanese attempting to play Chrome.'

I haven't heard them, so I can't comment on that, but this album kinda reminds me of Renaldo and the Loaf maybe mixed with a little Half Japanese. Or Ween? I don't know. It's very weird, but not in a 'let's be weird' way...this guy just seems genuinely strange. Some of the songs are pretty catchy, and have an 'old-timey' vibe to them...like maybe he listened to a lot of old swing, jazz and blues while writing this stuff? It also comes off as maybe the home recordings of a teenager, which might be why he adopted the name 'Little Stevie McCabe' for the release (he just goes by Steve McCabe in Axemen.)

Whatever the case, it's some very strange stuff, and it's clearly ALL him...there are no drums for the most part, just out of tune guitars and shaky vocals. I can see similarities between this and some of the weirder New Zealand stuff, like the Tall Dwarfs, but this goes way way way into outsider music territory.

There are a whole shit-ton of songs, too, and most of them are too short to get sick of. Give it a listen if you want to hear something playfully demented.

Little Stevie McCabe - 'Sweat it Out'

Tracklist:

1. Love Feel
2. A Seeker Peeped Into Space
3. Sweat it Out
4. The Place
5. Sea Spray Gets in Your Eyes
6. More
7. Ulterior Locomotive
8. Sparing Partner
9. Take the E-Train
10. Sounds Like...A Drunken Party
11. Your Little Chevrolet
12. Chip On My Shoulder
13. Spring Song
14. Aunty-Anti
15. Clues to a Dream
16. Dirt in the Blood
17. Crazy
18. Life Doesn't Go On
19. We Love Louis
20. Terminal of Love
21. The Call of the Forbidden Sea
22. Noise Must Go On
23. That's Why You're a Human Being
24. Welcome to the Province of Nausea
25. The Way I Walk

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