Iguanacondas - Bathtub Skooze (full album)

Purchase this album at https://iguanacondas.bandcamp.com/

Track Listing

1. Exotic Erotic 00:00
2. Danse Du Ventre 02:53
3. Nellie 05:30
4. Strange 10:14
5. The Godfather 14:47
6. I Saw the Saucers in the Sky 18:00
7. Milkfish Brains 25:32
8. Fishbowl Facility 28:13
9. Down the Drain Pipe 31:30

Is it an iguana? Or is it an anaconda? You bet your ass it is! And whatever Bathtub Skooze may be, this debut Compact Disc by The Iguancondas is soaked in it from cover to cover. This has everything you’re looking for in a surf record: the cool, ominous rumble of the rhythm section, the slow undulation of Bigsby-induced swells, the glassy warble of staccato leads swimming in spring-reverb, and the sonic evocations in technicolor, of sunburned dudes in tie-dye board shorts hanging ten through the barrel, wind-torn palm trees, and men of espionage and international intrigue. But this disc is less what a surf record is and more of what one can be. There are brief but well-placed and well-executed forays into piano balladry, blues, psychedelia, and even an almost-country number whose lap-steel slides greasily back and forth between Hawaiian and honky-tonk. Sparse and haunting vocals break through on occasion, ruminating on feeling fish-like or yearning for extraterrestrial deliverance from the tedium of life amongst a population that forever wallows in a cell-phone-addled trance.

Written, produced, and performed by Chad Vickers, (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano, organ, lap steel, vocals, and metal floor vent a-la wooden fish). There’s an impressive diversity in this one-man-band. My advice is to run out and purchase this Compact Disc, give it a spin, and enjoy where it takes you if the saucers don’t get you first. - Greg Newman