Best Old Music: Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985)

Camper Van Beethoven - "Ambiguity Song"

I went through intense phases of worship for two bands this fall. I forgot/was too busy/lazy to document my infatuation with The Lemonheads. That'll probably come around again, and I'll try to put down some thoughts on why they hit me so hard, hopefully with a little more perspective. But right now, no band is more perfect than Camper Van Beethoven.
On the surface, their debut LP, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, is at best an experimental take on folk and world music, and at worst, a faux-hippie novelty record with three or four very good pop songs. I still can't objectively say which is closer to the truth. But after repeated listening, the "quirkiness" of the album becomes "uniqueness." The instrumentals (there are 8 out of the 17 tracks on the album) reveal themselves as themes that support the more traditional pop songs, and are equally infectious. The real charm of the album, though, lies in David Lowery's surrealist lyrics. "Take The Skinheads Bowling," and "The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon" are the centerpieces, while "I Don't See You," "9 of Disks" and "Oh No!" create a uneasy tension and sense of foreboding that adds another layer of depth to the album. Then there are the songs that sound like inside jokes - there isn't a single line of "Where The Hell Is Bill?" that rhymes; "Wasted" takes the bitter, confrontational tone of the Black Flag version and reinterprets it as a sarcastic, slacker singalong; there is an honest-to-god chorus that includes the line "Authority sucks." I can't tell if this is a dissertation on irony, or if it's something else altogether.
CVB put out five albums over the span of five years, over which they matured and seemingly became a more "serious" band. They put out two albums on I.R.S. where they maintained their ability to write excellent pop songs, while continuing to experiment and showcase their oddball humor, then later proved their mettle with two big league albums on Virgin. They remained consistent and distinctive, and despite their wide-ranging catalogue, managed to avoid putting out a truly bad song. Of all the highlights, the most Camper Van Beethoven-ish of all (and the foremost example of everything that has made me fall in love with them) is this video from their self-titled third album, which is certainly one of the greatest things on the internet:

from Camper Van Beethoven (1986)