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Amazon.co.uk Review
Dismissed (if remembered at all) as a novelty band, Camper Van Beethoven may not seem the most obvious choice for a box set retrospective. Yet Cigarettes and Carrot Juice does a lot to reclaim this Santa Cruz college band from the grips of "Take the Skinheads Bowling", proving (through five CDs) that Camper Van Beethoven are worth remembering.
An eclectic collection of talented musicians, Camper Van Beethoven were born from the college music scene of 1980s California. Fronted by David Lowery (whose love for country music later found another outlet in Cracker), the band boasted a fairly traditional line-up of guitars, bass and drums, to which they added the multi-instrumental talents of Jonathan Segel on violin, mandolin and keyboards--a decision that was to influence their highly original and diverse sound.
Blending punk, ska, country, folk, psychedelia and various ethnic music traditions (Ukrainian, Greek, Yiddish, etc), the band's debut album, Telephone Free Landslide Victory was like nothing that had come before: ironic and humorous without being mocking or irritating, with a lackadaisical approach that belies its musicianship, it was a critical and (modest) commercial success (yes, mostly thanks to the aforementioned "Take the Skinheads Bowling"). They toned down the goofy experimentation a bit for subsequent albums (II & III and Camper Van Beethoven), before finally getting a major label deal (and major label budget) for their fourth and fifth albums, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and Key Lime Pie.
Cigarettes and Carrot Juice collects CVB's first three albums in their entirety, as well as a couple of discs of rarities and live recordings, many previously released but long since out-of-print. Camper Vantiquities, first released in 1993, collects the entire "Camper Van Mating Oven" EP with a few more demos, b-sides, unreleased tracks and rare mixes. Disc five, Greatest Hits Played Faster, is a live recording from the band's later years, featuring outstanding renditions of some of the songs from their last two major label albums, including an orchestral version of Key Lime Pie's "All Her Favourite Fruit" that outclasses the (already superb) original.
Camper Van Beethoven were masters of the surreal, one of the most distinct voices to shine through the straightfaced indie doldrums of southern California in the 1980s. Nearly 20 years later, the songs on Cigarettes and Carrot Juice sound just as good as they did back then. Clever and cool, but never taking themselves too seriously, Camper Van Beethoven are pure entertainment. --Robert Burrow
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