Narrow Adventure 1981-83 cassette
Essentially an early incarnation of the Paisley Underground-adjacent outfit WEDNESDAY WEEK but with Kjehl Johansen of the URINALS on bass, NARROW ADVENTURE was very much a product of the Los Angeles underground that they occupied from 1981 to 1983, coming out of an art-minded late-’70s punk tradition (Dangerhouse, et al.) that was giving way to the ’60s-enamored psychedelic jangle of bands like the BANGLES by the early ’80s. This archival collection is the first proper documentation of the group’s recorded material, as they never officially released anything before the line-up and name change to WEDNESDAY WEEK, although a few of the songs here later resurfaced in much more polished and new wave-oriented takes on the latter’s debut EP in 1983. NARROW ADVENTURE’s just slightly off-center approach to minimal DIY pop often comes across as a Californian counterpart to what OH-OK were simultaneously doing out in Athens, Georgia, particularly in the playfully harmonized dual vocals from sisters Kristi and Kelly Callan and the flashes of post-punk angularity in tracks like “Prop 2” and “Anyone Like Me,” although there’s also enough straightforward, sugar-sweet hooks in the mix that they could have easily had the same level of success as their L.A. peers the GO-GO’S if things had only played out a little differently for them. And on that note, it’s kind of unfortunate that this anthology will probably suffer at least some blanket disinterest resulting from being on a label generally thought of as an assembly line for goofball garage rock, but I’d love to be proven wrong there. Supreme ’80s cool-girl sounds, don’t write it off because of that ridiculous hamburger logo on the back!