Connie Voltaire has been busy releasing stuff, no big news there. But you might be surprised that he did a cover album of The Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society (with a Riptides cover at the end, ever the idiosyncratic). That one is credited to Connie Voltaire, and the first non Neo Neos-releated release on his Another Label came out back in December. Dummy is a Bloomington guy called Sean Albert, who’s also in Skull Cult. Skull Cult just released a new EP in December too, called New Mutilator, including a cover of The Coneheads’ Talking Heads cover. On his EP as Dummy, Albert plays everything himself, accompanied by a drum machine. It works surprisingly well, expanding upon the NWI sound that we all love.
Voltaire also released an cassette around the same time with a project called QQQL – a band that includes himself, Sean Albert of Dummy, and one E. Fern. Two of the tracks are co-written by Sean and Conny: “R U Talkin’ Joy D. 2 Me?” and “Cookies n’ Cream”. They also deal with some pretty serious matters (perhaps not so seriously) on “Underground Incels” and “TERFin’ USA”. If you’re not familiar with term, I suggest you check out this article in The Guardian. The latter is makeover of “Surfin’ USA” and come to think of it “Big Bug” sounds a whole lot like “Hey Mickey” by Toni Basil. I love this self-titled album – hope there’s more coming than just these 10 tracks.
