"got a lot of skills that don't pay the bills"
The Prefab Messiahs who originated in the early 80's but transported to the recent future, propelled by the remaster of their Devolver album via Burger Records.
"...followed by well-received new releases — the eight-song maxi-EP Keep Your Stupid Dreams Alive (Burger/KLYAM, 2015), and the album Psychspolitation Today (Lolipop/Burger, 2018) — and it seems the stars have finally aligned for this art-damaged psych-pop collective." - press notes
It does help that some of the sounds they mine seem to have come back around strong around in the 2000's via a host of more current bands in one form or another ( like The Memories or The Creation Factory or Mystic Braves).
Their most current offering is the indie rock / new wave crash called 21st Century Failure, available on digital platforms and also featured on Burger Records' epic "Quarantunes" 7 plus album campaign featuring over 140 artists most of whom recorded songs in self isolation. 21st Century Failure, with it's commentary of our crisis and woke cultures as well stabs at environmental issues, loss of privacy, online dating and more.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
soundcloud.com/the-prefab-messiahs
open.spotify.com/artist/5GYnYoovZYKHZwodZQ9leb
youtube.com/user/PrefabMessiahs
theprefabmessiahs.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/PrefabMessiahs
facebook.com/ThePrefabMessiahs
instagram.com/ThePrefabMessiahs
Timing is everything, they say. Of course, when you’re too far ahead of the curve musically-speaking, timing can also be a bitch. Give enough passage, however, and others eventually catch-up, understand... even emulate.
Such is the case for self-proclaimed micro-legendary weirdoz The Prefab Messiahs. Originally together from 1981-1983, they played basement and club shows fairly often. Armed with borrowed guitars, puny amps and a mission to confound the status quo, the Clark U. undergrads began a unique post-punk musical trajectory through the burgeoning-yet-insular Wormtown (Worcester, MA) underground. Aside from the 1983 cassette Flex Your Mind, though, no recorded material was available from them until 1998's Devolver CD-R - an anthology of their recordings from the early '80s. Several songs on the album were produced by their friend and outsider psychedelic singer-songwriter Bobb Trimble.
Fast-forward three decades later with the official remastered release of Devolver via Burger Records, followed by well-received new releases — the eight-song maxi-EP Keep Your Stupid Dreams Alive (Burger/KLYAM, 2015), and the album Psychspolitation Today (Lolipop/Burger, 2018) — and it seems the stars have finally aligned for this art-damaged psych-pop collective. These three releases witnessed not only a new appreciation from a younger fan base (not much older than the original one the band first started out with over 35 years ago), but also rave reviews from media, who traced the lineage from the Prefab Messiahs to many of today’s garage-psych scuzz-pups, such as Oh Sees, King Tuff, White Fence, Ty Segall, et al.
Prefabs' front dude Xerox Feinberg, a self-described "Lost Generation Wanna-be Spokesperson," describes the the band's approach on Psychsploitation Today thusly, “The new album is really a mental and sonic continuation of the things we were obsessed about from the beginning -- mashing up the sounds and attitudes of '60s garage-psychedelia with post-punk '80s stuff and dragging all that into whatever 'today' is -- while generally trying to poke people in the ribs and skewer some of the Big Shams behind all the Shiny Facades. We still don't do songs about girls' names or feeling good. We're still trying to toss everything into the mix including the kitchen sink. We're still bemused and shocked and disgusted with The State of Things -- and also in love with the noises in our heads and guitars. We like to think that The Prefab Messiahs' work is never done."
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