Non-sensical, un-user friendly, at times half finished. Camper Van Beethoven’s second album II & III saw the folk-punk of the band’s debut LP morphing into an even wider array of stylistic influences and (un)ironic contradictions, all rolled up into a coherently incoherent collection of some of the band’s most defining songs.
Originally released in 1986, the follow up to Telephone Free Landslide Victory did much to develop an already iconoclastic Camper Van Beethoven idiom. II & III ranges from alt-country ballads (“Sad Lovers’ Waltz”) to call-backs to the European folk instrumentals of their earlier work (“No Krugerrands For David”, “4 Year Plan”). Also featured is the band’s bluegrass-Americana take on Sonic Youth’s “I Love Her All the Time”…
Tag Archive: Camper Van Beethoven
Few bands come out of the gate sounding as genuinely unique and beholden to little that came before as Camper Van Beethoven did when their debut album, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, first appeared in 1985. They also managed to do so with a loose-limbed amiability suggesting it happened by mistake, or at least without too much conscious effort.
Camper Van Beethoven’s easygoing fusion of folk-rock, ska, indie rock, world music, psychedelia, and punk (the latter more in attitude than attack, though “Club Med Sucks” builds up an impressive head of steam) is smart, but also playful, as if some guys with really good record collections threw all they loved at a wall and it not only stuck, but managed to be funny at the same time.