Artist: Cocktail Slippers

Title: St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

Publication: AMPLIFIER

Date: September 1,  2008

http://amplifiermagazine.com/reviews/cds/outrageous_cherry_cd_1.php

OUTRAGEOUS CHERRY
WIDE AWAKE IN THE SPIRIT WORLD: THE BEST OF...
WICKED COOL (2008)

Outrageous Cherry have been purveying their brand of psychedelia for approximately fifteen years now, and doing an admirable job of it at that. However, while their sound teeters ever so closely to that of retro revivalists like the Church and Robyn Hitchcock (or more precisely, the original ‘60s savants -- Pink Floyd, the Move, the Pretty Things and the like), this Detroit outfit has never received the recognition accorded its like-minded peers.

Hopefully though, their fortunes may be about to change. Now implanted on a new label and making their bow with their first substantive anthology, the band is simultaneously peering forward while glancing back. That won’t matter much to newcomers; regardless of chronology, it flows nicely enough merely as a set of songs, each embossed with Outrageous Cherry’s iconic imprint. “What Have You Invented Today?,” “Stay Right Here For A Little While,” “Pretty Girls Go Insane” and the title track boast rousing rhythms, phased guitars and a thunderous revelry underscored by cosmic cacophony. While it’s a lot of fun to pick apart their psychedelic references, ultimately it’s the more listener friendly offerings - the bouncy pop approach of “Why Don’t We Talk About Something Else,” the clap-along chorus of “New Creature” and the acoustic sway of “More Than Blue” and “Our Love Will Change The World” - that provide the tuneful experiences.

Still, the most telling track on the album may be the one that name checks 1970, the year in which prog rock actually reached its zenith. Sharing its title with an early Jefferson Airplane song - and an appropriate one at that - “Saturday Afternoon” laments the death of flower power and the fact the world’s on the eve of destruction. On the other hand, it details this gloom and doom with a surprisingly giddy delivery, one that sounds, well, a lot like Spanky and Our Gang. A bit bizarre, all those mixed metaphors, but no matter. Outrageous Cherry is generally more sweet than severe.

--Lee Zimmerman [September 1, 2008]