Damn Cracker
Cracker
Greenland
(Cooking Vinyl)
Fucked-up dude, that David Lowery.
After the demise of Camper Van Beethoven, Lowery found ironic success in the grunge era with Cracker. When Cracker grew stale, he revived Camper, and apparently when the park closed on that it was time for more Cracker. Only Cracker, smelling a greatest hits album from their former record company they didn’t sanction, re-recorded all their hits. Ah, yes: the blessed wise-asses were alive and well. But now we have Greenland, a straight-up heartbreaker about the frontman’s troublesome life. Fucked-up dude, that Lowery.
Greenland isn’t all downers and whiskey tumblers. Perhaps inheriting a mood from a co-conspirator (Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous), “Where Have Those Days Gone” more or less sums the album. “Riverside” burns with Quadrophenia fury, and the smoldering “Sidi Ifni” has the sobriety of a pagan festival transmuted on LSD. This is your estranged stepbrother’s Cracker, enough to make you say, “Dammit, Lowery: make a solo album already.”
— Steve Forstneger
