From Amazon.co.uk
This re-release of the Dream Syndicate's 1982 debut
The Days of Wine and Roses, along with eight bonus tracks culled from obscure official releases, demos and rehearsal tapes, will hopefully go some way towards earning them some of posterity's wandering attention. The Dream Syndicate were one of those bands who fell through the cracks: cultishly popular and critically acclaimed at the time, and undeniably influential since, but rarely discussed. They were explicitly inspired by such similarly obscure guitar bands as
Big Star,
The Modern Lovers and
The Flamin' Groovies (the shimmering rhythm part of the latter's standard "Shake Some Action" is easily discernible in "That's What You Always Say"). At around the same time, other young bands, including the Dream Syndicate's fellow Americans
R.E.M.,
Camper Van Beethoven,
The Long Ryders and Australia's
The Church and
The Hoodoo Gurus, seemed to be thinking along the same lines, and hopes were high for a major commercial revival of classic guitar pop. It didn't quite happen, and the Dream Syndicate were as swiftly forgotten as false prophets generally are. The expectations of others were not their fault, however, and the gorgeous songs on
The Days of Wine and Roses still deserve a hearing in their own right.
--Andrew Mueller