Sneakers Reviewed
Sneakers
Nonsequitur Of Silence
(Collector’s Choice)
Pre dB’s incarnation Sneakers finds Chris Stamey, Mitch Easter, and Will Rigby fooling around as Sneakers.
While arena, prog, and Southern rock made their way through the ’70s, a Beatlesesque band called Big Star morphed out of The Box Tops (“The Letter,” “Cry Like A Baby”) and later unofficially passed the jangly baton to The dB’s, who would later influence R.E.M. and The Replacements. This bit of rock history has been given extraordinary play despite its irrelevance to the record-buying public of the ’70s and early ’80s, and gets a bigger boost with Nonsequitur Of Silence, an expanded reiussue of sorts. The Sneakers’ two EPs, *The Sneakers* and In The Red, were recorded three years apart yet plainly establish a link that was only tenuous when initially comparing Big Star and The dB’s. If anyone bought Big Star albums in the ’70s, it was Stamey and co. The collection’s bizarre title track winds prog elements with that ’60s sitar reverence, while “Condition Red” and “On The Brink” fostered a hundred Urge Overkill tracks. Some songs, like “No Wonder,” could have used further exploration, but for the most part Nonsequitur is an amiable snapshot, and an evolutionary one.
— Steve Forstneger
