Cub Scout Bowling Pins - Clang Clang Ho - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Cub Scout Bowling Pins hop in the InchMagic TaxiInch, turn on the AM radio and time travel forty to forty-five years back in time. The project is mysteriously presented, but it's a thinly-veiled alias of the ridiculously prolific and talented Guided By Voices.Minus the usual punk and prog influences, there are strong whiffs of bubble gum, psych and soft rock with sugary doses of ornate baroque pop. Long renowned scholars of rock, the Ohio players have occasionally worn their influences on their sleeves, but this time they seemingly have their jackets on inside out. Perhaps conceptually similar to how GBV went tongue-in-cheek InchcountryInch backing Cash Rivers & The Sinners in 2018, but Cub Scout Bowling Pins is a thousand times subtler, like an eccentric cousin of GBV with the craziness knob turned up by 10%. And while Cash Rivers discs trade hands among collectors on Discogs for hundreds of dollars, Cub Scout Bowling Pins' debut 7-inch Heaven Beats Iowa was recently spotted for sale for no less than $10,000. On their debut long player, America's newest hit-makers dip into retro-futuristic weirdness, side-by-side with whimsical sophistication and candy-coated technicolor complexity. In the flip-flop world of Summer 2021, transistor radios will vibrate with the sweet and hooky InchWeInch and InchNova MonaInch while Inch© 1-2-3Inch will InchclimbInch the InchchartsInch. InchRide My EarthmobileInch spins like an even-more demented 13th Floor Elevators. Is that Jimmy Webb or Lee Hazlewood hidden behind the latest issue of InchThe Telegraph Hill GazetteInch? InchSchoolmaster BonesInch chortles with a groovy pretzel logic, while InchSpace InvaderInch and InchMagic TaxiInch beckon with jangling guitars, shimmering strings, mellotrons and vintage synths. Following three critically-lauded GBV albums recorded in quarantine in 2020, is this a light-hearted detour, a midlife cri