hot cave records

boston massachusetts u.s.a.

comments or questions: contact

also visit www.thebigdisappointments.com

check out the big disappointments new music and video here

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The Big Disappointments is eric boomhower on vocals & guitar, andy abrahamson on guitar, tall jon littlefield on bass, and lisa mullen on drums. the album consists of fifteen songs recorded at kissypig studio in allston ma.

"you know : insolently sexy, not only are we thinking about mark e. smith, the cramps, the mad daddys, lady scarface lunch or pussy galore as incarnations with some dirt inside." - manuel aubert a.k.a. blackbird merle leonce bone - trauma sound poet / cry(p)tical rock-purveyor

thalia zedek (come, live skull, uzi, and of course the current thalia zedek band) co-produced the album. the album was mixed by paul kolderie at camp street. paul has worked with Hole, Radiohead, the Pixies, and Dinosaur Jr. to name a few. alex hartman also assisted. it was mastered by nick zampiello at new alliance east.

track listing: only here only now, dance track budokan, deathbed country, like to know, a warhead, chemicals, crop diamond everglade, too much intake, an absolute farmer, the hunted whale, money makers, and how relieved, the ugly man, so unlike you, guarantee

reviews:

a review from France roughly translated- http://nextclues.com/

The Big Disappointments - s/t 2007 Hot Cave

It is well known, that trouble supports creativity. From Boston still emerges incredible groups and The Big Disappointments is one of those. This quartet has just signed an album really bluffant which draws with deepest musical roots ricaines, that is the delta blues, the swamp rock'n'roll and the white blues like with a certain sonic music. Right now traditional: I insist! Produced by Thalia Zedek (of Come still should it be pointed out?), this album éponyme makes one think irremediably of the group préci(pi)té for these feverish environments. Here, returned is more immediate. The titles are shorter, almost not waste, that is listened of a draft. The group aligns the tubes in a disconcerting way. Incredible! The large strong point is the voice... Ah THIS VOICE! Classieuse, nervous, cynical and envoûtante. The dude which sings (and which plays of scrapes) controls its subject with wonder. I will repeat myself but one is in the presence of a very great group. To pass to the side would be a terrible error, that it is said! (9.5/10) - Nicko (2007)

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a review from the UK - www.subba-cultcha.com

'The Big Disappointments'
Hot Cave Records

Booze spilling, rockabilly influenced, smutty dirt rock that reeks of 1980s class. The Big Disappointments are quite the opposite.

These boys and one girl, fashioned out of Boston bands The In Out and The Non-Famous, really do like their 1980's punk influences. Joining the dots in between the raw barbed wire delivery of The Gun Club and the sumptuous melodies of The Replacements, circa Let It Be, they have dispatched an album of bass soaked recordings, echoing fuzzy guitar and post-punk scrawling that all sound like they've been recorded in a tunnel with the pressure of oncoming bullet train.

Take for instance the arse slapping bass juggernaut on Dance Track Budokan that drives lo-fi opposing serrated guitars, and Eric Boomhower's scathing vocal, like a F1 car race around a moonlit M25. Or the high speed electric bread knife riffs and raging solos that set fire during Like To Know. These guys really have studied the book that Jeffery Lee Pierce (Gun Club) never wrote, and a fine book it would have been each page stained with the claret of experience.

This is not the refined sound of a band of young whipper snappy chaps. These boys have graduated from the early learnings of other bands and know exactly the sound they are tracking. If there were to be any complaints to be handed out they would be sent to the office of lack of variety. There are 15 songs here and only two noticeable styles - fast as fuck and slow like Mark E Smith's slurred sentences, but there are a lot worse things that could mount an assault on your hearing for just over 45 minutes.

By: David Samuel (Nov. 2007)

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a review from Performer Mag http://www.performermag.com/nep.recordedreviews.0710.php

The Big Disappointments —The Big Disappointments
Produced by Thalia Zedek
Mixed by Paul Kolderie and Alex Hartman
Recorded by KRM at Kissypig, Allston, MA
Mastered by Nick Zampiello at New Alliance East

The Big Disappointments specialize in breakneck, country-tinged post-punk. Their self-titled debut has a couple of mid-tempo tracks, but these guys sure as hell aren’t going to try and sneak a ballad past you. Opener “Only Here Only Now” slaps you with a stock blues riff accelerated to whiplash speeds, giving you just less than enough time to acclimate yourself before the vehicle lurches forward as the rhythm section enters, drums thundering along like a jitterbugging giant.

Production wise, the record sounds fantastic. It ought to —the record was mixed by Paul Kolderie, a name associated with The Pixies, Radiohead, and Dinosaur Jr., among other alt-rock heavyweights. While the vocals may be mixed a bit low for pop-accustomed ears, the mix is clear from start to finish, letting each instrument shine in its own niche amongst the group’s chugging dissonance. The guitars are angular and cutting, but with balanced amounts of scrappiness and balls. The bass churns and bounces along with the aforementioned gargantuan drums. For a perfect example of all this in action, see track five, “A Warhead.” It’s one of the less frantic numbers, with tightly spaced, nicely fuzzed call-and-response guitar work over a heavily grinding foundation reminiscent of when Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club were at their gloom-rock peak.

The semi-discernable vocals rant and moan somewhere between the bass and the guitars. On much of the record, singer Eric Boomhower sounds a lot like a snottier Black Francis in his phrasing and delivery. There is also a nasal, melodramatic flair reminiscent of Jack White on the first couple of White Stripes records, before all the mandolins and bad mustaches. This likeness becomes especially apparent on bluesier numbers like “An Absolute Farmer.”

While the band is insistently straightforward in their general approach to riff-layering and arrangements, they are good enough at what they do, bringing enough conviction, inventive structure and dynamics to make this a compelling listen from beginning to end.

(Hot Cave)

-Jon Carter (Oct. 2007)

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a review from the UK http://www.leicesterbangs.co.uk/reviews.html

The Big Disappointments - S/T (Hot Cave)
There’s no shortage of reference points throughout The Big Disappointment’s debut release on Hot Cave Records, and they’re all of them highly creditable. Fifteen short sharp stabs ripple with familiar sounds invoking The Cramps, The Only Ones, The Cure, The Fall, Green on Red, John Spencer – they’re all in there somewhere and they’re all paying their way. There’s a pleasing spine-tingling edginess about this collection, induced by a sense of Jon Littlefield and Lisa Mullen’s pounding rhythm section being slashed to ribbons by the jagged twin guitars of Eric Boomhower and Andy Abrahamson, the latter duo being ex-members of Boston post-punk outfit The In Out. Tipped off by spooky stark and distant vocals the four piece span the finest of styles from psychobilly and garage to warped blues with a commendable ambition and clear conviction.
Neil B. (Sept. 2007)

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a review from France roughly translated http://www.kfuel.org/fdf/index.php3

THE BIG DISAPPOINTMENTS
"St" - CD
Hot Cave 2007

They are of Boston. It is their first album, co-produced by Thalia Zedek. They cultivate the art of nonthe look following the example of Feelies or of Television and they succeed where the majority of the groups of No wave failed. While Mars, DNA and consorts in vain échinaient themselves to erase the black origins of the rockn' roll, The Big Disappointments irradiates a white noise éffluves Delta. This disc is brilliant, étincelant and daring. 15 titles métissés by a bayou under splinters. Imagine Sonic Youth at the dawn of their career beginning again of Bo Diddley and you will have a rather precise vision of this album éponyme. The Lomax catalogue annotated by The Fall. The music of Big Disappointments is iniquitous, single and diablement irresistible. The traditional ones of tomorrow listen to aujourdh' ui "An Absolute Farmer", "Like to Know"... Férocement American, this formation delivers a lesson of opening, musical, melody and sensory. Even Larsen comes from the bayou. They very included/understood. This quartet signed a strong, powerful work and déhanchée.2 anecdotic titles gives a human face to a feverish recording. The presence of Thalia Zedek is not alleviating since the last recordings of Live Skull started to reveal accents bluesy. The way was perhaps traced, still had it to be borrowed. One Very Very Large Disc...

Don Lurie (Sept. 2007)

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a review from Boston zine The Noise http://www.thenoise-boston.com/content/blogcategory/3/17/

THE BIG DISAPPOINTMENTS
Hot Cave Records
The Big Disappointments
15-song CD

Screw any attempts at rock-crit hipness here—this is just fucking excellent. The hard part, however, is painting an accurate picture of the music, which reminds me of many bands, but not enough to actually name one. It’s a pretty stripped down sound that manages to be lush when it needs to be, it travels effortlessly from the haunted, medicated country of “Deathbed Country” to the desperate straight-ahead drive of “Like to Know” to the swampy “Crop Diamond Everglade,” but all while sounding like one band with one coherent musical vision. Eric Boomhower’s vocals are all miked in that sort of “distant radio station” style, which works perfectly without seeming like a gimmick, and the rest of the band demonstrates a focus on the requisites of the song, egos well in hand. Produced by the band and Thalia Zedek, mixed by Paul Kolderie and mastered by Nick Zampiello, this comes with some serious pedigree, and the whole thing shines like a piece of gold found on a lonesome fog-bound trail somewhere in the West. Damn near perfect. (Tim Emswiler - Sept. 2007)

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a review from Delusions Of Adequacy http://www.adequacy.net/review.php?reviewID=8102

Listening to The Big Disappointments' recent, self-titled release takes you back to the Los Angeles scene of the early 80s, where Green on Red and Dream Syndicate mixed blues, punk, and garage into a cocktail of angst and deliverance. This Boston 4-piece churns out its music with a little more emphasis on punk and less on psychedelia, but it doesn't take any measures to hide its lineage.
Boston and the Atlantic states have had their own share of bands working this territory - the Lyres being perhaps the most entrenched - and the labels Taang and even Metal Blade put out some solid examples. Then there's also the band Come, who brought a little bit of experimentation with the sound. It's fitting in fact that Come's Thalia Zedek helped produce The Big Disappointments.

Sometimes veering into psychobilly and swamp rock ("So Unlike You" and "Crop Diamond Everglade," for crying out loud), sometimes doing punk rave-ups ("Like To Know," "Money Makers"), but for the most part staying close to blues and garage, this album comes off as something of a retread. "Like To Know" sounds like The Last with a hangover. "Too Much Intake" would fit well with anything by Jon Spencer.

Loud guitars, blues scales, basic drumming, workmanlike bass playing: its all fairly ordinary and familiar. The consistent echo on the vocals borrows from early garage bands from the 60s and The Cramps. But perhaps the band's sound can best be summarized as a cross between The Wipers and TSOL. You've heard this before, yes, but if you liked it then you might be excited to add another update to your library with this one. If you're looking to expand your horizons, though, you'll need to look elsewhere.

by David Smith, 8/15/07

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a review from Heet Stof in the Netherlands http://hotstof.blogspot.com/2007/08/absolute-no-disappointment.html

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Absolute No Disappointment

I think garage rock is one of the few true successors of the rock 'n roll like it has originated in the fifties. Short, raw songs played by a lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist, a bass player and a drummer. There have been numerous garage rock bands in the fifty years since rock 'n roll was born, but I don't think that there are more than half a dozen bands who were successful with a large audience. Some of the better known bands are 13th Floor Elevators, the Stooges, Gun Club, the Fall, the White Stripes and the most famous of them all: the Ramones. Each year some new promising bands emerge and every time it's a suprise if they become kwown outside their own city. If it's up to me The Big Disappointments definitely deserve a larger public.
The band is from Boston and consists of Eric Boomhower (vocals and guitar), Lisa Mullen (drums), Jon 'Tall Guy' Littlefield (bass) and Andy Abrahamson (guitar). In 1999 Eric performed once under the name The Big Disappointments as a joke and only last year he picked up that name for his new band. They are obviously a live band and maybe that's the reason why they record every show. That's why it's also evident why they debuted with a self-burned live CD last year. Their first, real and selftitled studio album is also recorded live in the studio. There are 15 tracks on this CD and it lasts just 39 minutes, like it is supposed to. This album by The Big Disappointments (which they're certainly not) is produced by indie heroine Thalia Zedek, also from Boston. Just enjoy "Dance Track Budokan", "Crop Diamond Everglade", "An Absolute Farmer" and "Like To Know"!

posted by Heet Stof @ 4:32 PM Limburg, Netherlands

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a review from Patrick Masterson,
former music director and DJ at WUSC-FM Columbia. from audiversity.com

7-4-07

The Big Disappointments - The Big Disappointments / Hot Cave Records (2007)

This review comes to you from the not-too-distant past where the Stars n' Stripes are still adorned on every lawn of every neighborhood in the great United States and "everyone" is celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, hamburgers and not a little alcohol to make things more interesting.

Even more critical than that is the music. Beyond Francis Scott Key, what could be more American than Toby Keith, Phil Spector or, uh, jazz? Garage-rock. It almost seems silly to explain where the style originated given its name, but one of the earliest sub-genres in rock n' roll's history evolved in the early 60s with bands like The Wailers who were literally playing out of their suburban garages. DIY before DIY was DIY, these groups eventually made way for better production techniques in the late 60s and early 70s, but with everything old being new again all the time, garage-rock has had its resurgence.

Crossbreed a little of that with the spirit of psychobilly and punk and you've discovered the secret to the all-American formula Boston's The Big Disappointments employ on their self-titled sophomore album and first official recording (Live at Studio Eight has preceded this). There's nothing more American than two guitarists, one a singer and lead and the other a rhythm player, a bassist, and a drummer. The perfect band formula, just don't tell ...Trail of Dead or I'm From Barcelona. These upstarts aren't actually upstarts at all; Eric Boomhower (possibly one of the most awesome names in rock) and Andy Abrahamson were members of The In Out and this whole Big Disappointments thing was supposed to be a joke back in 1999. Eight years on, they're serious: In a mere 39 minutes, the group rifles through 15 songs and leaves little doubt that they've joined this latest wave of new groups with a slightly destructive garage-rock style.

It's interesting to note that the aforementioned styles that are all over songs like the blazing opener "Only Here Only Now" and the stomping "An Absolute Farmer," post-punk also intrudes on tracks like the rhythm-driven "Dance Track Budokan" and "Chemicals." Lisa Mullen's drumming is sturdy on this release and one of the main reasons it succeeds so well so often, the backbone of virtually every song reeling in the metallic-sounding guitars and subtle bass that rarely dominates. Rather, it quietly leads the guitars down corridors and through back alleyways as on "The Hunted Whale" or "The Ugly Man."

You can hear a lot of Philly's Burning Brides in this release to cite a recent contemporary, but The Big Disappointments are more than just a comparison. They're more than just a thankfully ironic bandname. They are a reflection of America on its proudest day: Sloppy, reckless, guiltless and free with just a touch of gravitas saved for the fireworks. Pass those burgers this way. Yessir, I think I'll have another.

Posted by pmmasterson at 8:40 PM