The Connells: Buy 'em!!

As promised several months ago, for the first time in far too many years, albums from Raleigh's own Connells are available once more.  Currently, access is limited to MP3 download only from Amazon, but the band hopes to have CDs and albums in stores soon.  

Doesn't appear that their first album (1985's Darker Days) or most recent album (2001's Old School Dropouts) are available, but every release in between is out there.  If you're not familiar with the band please, please, please check them out.  Boylan Heights, their second album from 1987, proved to be a good starting point for me thanks to an incredibly exciting album review in the Washington Post the year after its release.  And if you're familiar with the band only from their fifth album, 1993's Ring (or maybe just from the single "'74-'75" from that album) you need to hear their other work.  Weird Food & Devastation from 1996 is not only a very good album -- no matter what 50% of Amazon reviewers would have you believe -- but a pretty brave one, too, given the drastic change in sound & direction they settled on following the huge success they had with Ring (and it's that unexpected change that accounts for so many unfair listener reviews of the album, of course).  And 1998's Still Life is one of those albums that is so overlooked & unknown that you just have to shake your head.