Albums by this artist

Superelastic (1994)

Velo-Deluxe

Superelastic

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» JONATHAN COHEN | SENIOR EDITOR

Velo-Deluxe Superelastic Mammoth, 1994 RiYL: Swervedriver, Antenna, Lemonheads, Mysteries Of Life

In the early 90's, John Strohm was man on the move. After the split of Boston's seminal alterna-pop darlings Blake Babies, Strohm and drummer Freda Love moved back to their Bloomington, Indiana hometown and formed Antenna with guitarist Jake Smith and bassist Vess Ruhtenberg. On two albums and two EPs, Antenna cranked up the volume and intensity several notches higher than Blake Babies, but internal tensions splintered the band in 1994.

Strohm recruited two young Bloomington musicians, drummer Mitch Harris (then only a 19-year-old freshman at Indiana University) and bassist Kenny Childers, to help him flesh out a batch of new songs. Christened as Velo-Deluxe, the new band put these songs to tape later that year at Bloomington's Echo Park Studio with Anjali Dutt (Oasis, Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine) behind the board. The resulting album, Superelastic, recalls the heavy distortion found on Antenna's final album Hideout, shrouding simple pop gems like "Desiree" and the title track in the kinds of swirly noises championed by My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver and Ride. Strohm's lyrics no doubt reflect the ambivalence of musically starting over yet again, most notably on the sweet, pretty "Alibi" and the Violent Femmes-style pop-punk of "Dirtass": "I feel sick and I feel dirty / might be dead before I'm thirty."

Strohm peppers his familiar country influences into the acoustic "Said," the swaying "Angels" and pedal steel-tinged "Saturday," but doesn't allow his songs to get cluttered by the bevy of additional instrumentation (organ, sax, trumpet). And as crunchy pop goes, "Skin & Bones" and "Vello-Deluxe" are about as good as it gets. As it turned out, Superelastic was the only record Velo-Deluxe made, a highly satisfying glimpse at Strohm's underrated songwriting prowess.

JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"