Sea to Shining Sea
While Love As Laughter's previous album,Destination 2000, was a fine but flawed record, the brasher, flashier, plain damn biggerSea to Shining Seais a truly triumphant, worthy follow-up. "Temptation Island" sails in with the sound of Guns and Roses wired through Pussy Galore's groaning mixing deck, with LAL front man Sam Jayne yelping, "Hey! Are you going back to paradise?" The album isn't all dumb rock thrills, though. The very self-referential "Sam Jayne = Dead" is a sleazy, shivering streak of nihilism that recalls the ragged soul-believer shtick of much-missed fellow Northwesterners the Make-Up. And "Miss Direction," a hymn to debauchery and decadence, offers a genuine moment of emotional connection, with Jayne drawling, "Oh, Miss Direction is all I need / She's the greatest miss I've ever seen / Oh, Miss Direction, you're my queen" over the thrum of distorted bass and bittersweet acoustics. Love As Laughter are a trailblazing retro-rock beast of a band that boast the hips of Mick Jagger, the sneer of Richard Hell, and the fervent from-the-margins manifesto of early Sonic Youth. This is the shape of Seattle rock at the turn of the millennium, and you know what? It hardly ever sounded this good.--Louis Pattison