Smashface by The Hitmen
Twenty years ago I went into a small studio with Arnie, Joe, Bill and Dan. This is what we came out with. It combined their fine musicianship and general weirdness with what was probably the pinnacle of my eight-track recording/production skills. As songwriters go, Joe was pretty much a weirdo, but you can’t listen to The Stuff without thinking there is something wrong with Arnie as well. And no matter how weird they got, Arnie sang them with aplomb.
This record was really fun to make. We didn’t worry too much about whether they could do every little bit live, we just made the coolest damn record we could. We pulled in your basic Northwest cast of thousands to sing, to play some bits here and there, and to help make Smashface the masterpiece that it is.
Tracklist
| 1. | Ice Age | 3:21 |
| 2. | The Stuff | 2:50 |
| 3. | Cold War | 2:28 |
| 4. | My Love Ran Out | 3:57 |
| 5. | I Love Your Poems Of Love | 4:31 |
| 6. | Saturday | 2:28 |
| 7. | Medicine Hat | 2:59 |
| 8. | Thrasher's Corner | 3:50 |
| 9. | I Can Fly | 3:30 |
| 10. | Sense of Sound | 2:28 |
| 11. | This Must Be The Place | 3:44 |
| 12. | Repeat | 2:15 |
Credits
Mark Palmer, Lead Vocals, R. Guitar; Joe Leonard, L. Guitar, Keyboards, Backing Vocals; Dan Swank, Bass, Backing Vocals; Bill Bowman, Drums, Backing Vocals.
Additional and welcomed musicians:
On The Stuff: Jon Auer, Ken Stringfellow, Keith Livingston, Backing Vocals; On My Love Ran Out: Jeff Kelly, Piano; Mike Jones, Clarinet; On This Must Be the Place: Jimm McIver, Backing Vocal. The Angelic Voices (This Must Be… and I Can Fly): Ava Chakravarti, Marie Chauvan, Wendi A. Dunlap. The Ice Age Choir: Jon, Ken, Keith, Jimm, and Mark from above, also Casey Allen, Tony Driscoll, Todd Davis and the Guy from Handful of Dust.
Produced by Tom Dyer
Recorded at TDS Productions, January 1990.
Basic trax recorded with Conrad Uno at Egg Studios.
Remasterd by Tom Dyer at TDS Productions 2010.
bonus tracks:
Instrumental is previously unreleased. Recorded at Egg Studios 1988 by Conrad Uno, produced by The Hitmen.
Perfect Pain and Tiger Carpet originally released 1988 as Green Monkey single GM031, Engineered by Keith Livingston, Produced by Tom Dyer.
License
All rights reserved.
The Hitmen were no-hit wonders; they were obscure in 1990 and totally forgotten by 2010. None of that dilutes the magnificence of SMASHFACE. Its brilliance lies in its artful precision as well as its raw eclecticism. This is the evidence and you are the witnesses: The Hitmen had their shining moment and made their one great record.