How You Continue
Dreaming
Year: 1995
Format: LP/CD/Cassette
Label / Release No.:
LP/CD - Communion (comm36) & Cassette - Shrimper (shr58) |
Tracks:
Colton
Speedway
Orange Blossom
Bicycle
Wish and Need
Insect
Glitter Jazz
Son House
Half Empty Shoes
How You Continue Dreaming
Party Hat
Ghetto Bed
Green and White Meet Blue
Suckdown
Sorry State Line
727
Hydrogen Suitcase
Washout
98 Pounds
Old City Cool |
Credits:
Allen Callaci - Vocals
Dennis Callaci - Guitar
Joel Connell - Drums (Tracks 1,2,5,7,10,14,17)
Chris Jones - Drums (Tracks 4,8,11,13,15,18,19)
Bob Durkee - Guitar (Track 18)
Peter Hughes - Guitar (Track 18)
Recorded by Bob Durkee
Cover
Layout by Allen and Dennis Callaci
Recorded November 1993 - July 1994 in San Dimas
(except Tracks 3,6,9,12,16 - Recorded onto one-track at Rael
Studios) |
Reviews:
(Split review w/ "Bicycle")
I hereby proclaim Refrigerator
the best game in town - a title they easily win with the song "Bicycle"
alone but further cemented by throwing off some of the loosest and best
poetry-in-motion I've heard since M.I.A.-Deluxx (what happened to them?!).
Allen Callaci sings his small town/boy-next-door/real stories of the
Upland PD to the tune of brother Dennis' guitar and some trade-off drums
by Joel Connel and Chris Jones. The Brinkman and Communion discs were
released almost simultaneously and share the aforementioned "Bicycle" (
... and she's got your eyes and she looks almost like you / as she rides
off ... ) as well as a few others ("Speedway", "Party Hat", "Sorry State
Line") performed acoustically on the Brinkman disc (The weatherman said it
was a perfect night for a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, but I'm glad I'm
here, feeling like I'm sitting on my back stoop, watching the sun sink
behind Upland's foothills, intoxicated by the fragrant orange blossoms)
"Son House," "98 Pounds," "83 Ford," "How You Continue Dreaming," "Green &
White Meet Blue."
I'm positively enamored.
Leslie Gaffney (hairpie@earthlink.net)
- From Popwatch#7
Everything I've read about
Refrigerator, as well as the testimonials I've heard from friends or
acquaintances, describes the band in awe and hyperbolic tones. "God-like",
"the greatest band on earth", "they rule". I've played the disc some 15
times, trying to reconcile the acclaim with what I hear. What I hear are
20 songs recorded on one to four tracks by resolutely amateurish players.
Guitarist Dennis Callaci (who runs the militantly low-tech label Shrimper,
where this album first appeared on cassette) imposes structure with his
vocabulary of ultra-simple riffs, spasmodic fuzz outbursts, and abortive
solo excursions laid over elementary beats put down by drummers Joel
Connel and Chris Jones. But it's singer Allen Callaci who defines
Refrigerator's sound: his voice is high, keening, cracked, and ragged -
resolutely unsingerly and unashamed of it. Hell, I'm not even sure if he's
aware of it - in his mind, he may be a stadium rocker singing to adoring
millions. Lo-fi musicians often distort and obscure their tunes, but for
the Callaci's the song's the thing and theirs stand naked and unadorned.
Some are pretty good, especially the fragile "Hydrogen Suitcase" and the
memorably propulsive "Son House". I once read that in Japan the dedicated
amateur is more highly esteemed than the competent professional; the
latter can rely on expertise, but the former must pull something out of
his soul. Perhaps that's it: in their own warped way, Refrigerator play
soul music.
Bill Meyer (mailbox@puncturemagazine.com)
- From Puncture #33 - Summer 1995
While ethical matters of rock-crit
gentility usually preclude the hoisting of a fellow scribe's head up on a
stick, the press cribsheet does read, "Key selling points: 'Refrigerator
sounds like the Velvet Underground, only weaker, cheaper, and about twenty
million times watered down.' - Gina Arnold, East Bay Express, 8/22/94."
Um, sorry, Gina, but the only things linking the Velvets and Refrigerator
are electric guitars and drums.
Allen Callaci sings, Dennis Callaci plays guitar and the siblings enlist a
couple of pals to provide drum accompaniment. The demo-ish charm of the
recordings recalls those Xpressway tapes that floated over here from New
Zealand about a decade ago. There's a naked honesty at play in the music
that comes from people writing songs and getting 'em down quickly without
much ado over whether a label will sign the band. These days, citing
Sebadoh and Guided By Voices as lead-ins to a band's idiosyncrasy is as
much a cliche as trotting out the V.U. comparison one more time. But both
of these groups' latter-day success proved that great tunesmiths are lumps
of coal waiting to be unearthed and polished by public scrutiny, not
"sensitive artists" being groomed by managers and lawyers. And in
Refrigerator's case, there are 20 nascent, grimy gems present on this
disc.
From the spindly, jangly, harmonies-strewn guitar intro of "Party Hat",
which sounds like the late John Cipollina doing warm-up exercises prior to
a slippery folk rock number with Chris Knox's kid brother on vocals, to
the wistful childhood remembrance and power poppy, melodic "Bicycle" and
its darker minor-key blues analogue, "Son House", it seems that every tune
here beckons with the friendly familiarity of a recurring dream.
It's a record for you, folks, not just critics.
Fred Mills (magnet@magnetmagazine.com)
- From Magnet #18 - June/July 1995
Good one-track recordings may
at first listen give one an anyone-can-do-it complex, but have you ever
tried emulating Jackson Pollack's action paintings, the ones that
supposedly any kid could do? Has your band ever perfectly covered a Shaggs
song?
The fumbling staggering rhythms on How You Continue Dreaming are all
bouncy and melodic. "Colton" is worth the price of all 20 songs, but
fortunately there are others to wear out like your favorite shoes. Such
wanking has been waiting for breathing room since the time of the
Mascisian Dinosaur. For this writer at least, this subtle and sometimes
haunting disc is sublime from the first note onward.
Be warned, however (all that I gleaned from the press kit - it's one key
selling point) that Gina Arnold believes "Refrigerator sounds like the
Velvet Underground ... twenty million times watered down". So whether or
not you like Refrigerator depends on how you feel about watered-down VU -
not! Admittedly, there are Velvety scrapings on the bouncy scratch-fi
droning of "Son House", but what band wasn't influenced by VU? It's 1995,
dammit, rock exists in no vacuum. If you want happy-fi, here it is. If you
want derivation listen to Stereolab, who, by the way, are a fine group.
Cyndi Elliot (editorial@altpress.com)
- From Alternative Press #88 - November 95
The real "kings of the Inland
Empire" go digital with the release of How You Continue Dreaming, a
42-minute exercise in the potent force of minimalistic rock `n' roll.
Allen and Dennis Callaci, vocalist and guitarist, respectively, have
forged a body of work that's certainly more than the sum of its meager
parts: simple guitar strumming, basic drum beats and Allen's off-key but
poetic vocals captured on one- or four-track recording devices and
released on cassette tape or 7" labels like Dennis's Shrimper (and one LP
on 18 Wheeler). At the core of Refrigerator's coffeehouse emo-core is
Allen's honest expression and a musical challenge to the larger rock
medium, which thrives on guitarbass-drum-vocals arrangements fleshed out
by full studio recordings. While bands like Sebadoh and Pavement have been
questioning the same rock idiom, they've moved on from their early, more
primitive releases to real-budget CDs that sell well in shopping malls;
Refrigerator doesn't exactly invite the Lollapalooza generation in with
Dreaming, but open ears won't be bogged down by Allen's off-key singing
and will go straight for the band's emphatic, unapologetic songs, such as
the snappy "Bicycle," the bluesy "Wish And Need," the rainy-day
"Speedway," "Glitter Jazz," "Sorry State Line" and "Washout."
Lydia Anderson (lydiaa@cmj.com)
- from CMJ Music Monthly
Refrigerator's work displays a
serious bent toward indirect, navel-gazing tunes that sprawl out in many
directions, and nowhere is this more clear than on How You Continue
Dreaming -- the twenty tracks on this double album have a lazy drawl to
them that's typically more emotionally upsetting than it is beautiful.
This is, of course, meant as a compliment -- while some of the songs on
the record betray a lack of direction, most wind up compelling because of
their epically low-key rustic ness. The albums which followed swung this
sound through prettier areas (Anchors of Bleed) and into more accessible
pop (Refrigerator), but their heart is still the elliptical languor that
makes How You Continue Dreaming so involving.
Nitsuh Abebe (allmusic.com)
- from All-Music Guide |
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