LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Following their 1984 debut, Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man (also available from Rhino Handmade), Guadalcanal Diary recorded Jamboree (with Rodney Mills instead of Don Dixon as producer), an album the band admits was too much a product of expectations and outside influences. So they re-teamed with Dixon and made 1987's 2X4, their best record -- and home to the signature track "Litany (Life Goes On)." Longtime friends Murray Attaway and Jeff Walls had played together and separately in various projects. Walls was in a new wave band called Strictly American when the two began collaborating seriously. Attaway was a fan of prog and punk, at one time singing for the Yes cover band Blue Ash. Conceiving a new group that would play oddball covers, Civil War ballads, and original songs, Attaway and Walls enlisted John Poe on drums and Attaway's then-girlfriend Rhett Crowe on bass. Emergency Broadcast System, as they were known, made their live debut in late 1981. With a name change to Guadalcanal Diary, they became part of an emerging Atlanta-area new-music scene home to The Fans, The Swimming Pool Q's, The B-52's, and, later, R.E.M. The band quickly developed a sound of its own. As Attaway describes it in the liner notes to the Rhino Handmade edition of Walking, "It was great fun to be able to take a line from a revered blues song, a drum pattern from Africa, and a guitar or bass riff from The Stooges, and squeeze it all into some loud, tongue-in-cheek mush." After building an underground buzz with their four-song Watusi Rodeo EP, Guadalcanal Diary signed with Danny Beard's respected DB label. R.E.M. producer Don Dixon was hired for the big-budget ($3,000) record that would become Walking. Well received by critics and college radio upon its release, the album caught the ear of Elektra, who signed the band to a four-record deal (the re-release of Walking being the first of the four). By 2X4 the band felt the need to explore new musical terrain, resulting in expanded arrangements and punchier sounds. The jangly rock of their first two albums would be supplanted by something slightly tougher, as evidenced by such churning rockers as "Under The Yoke" and "Things Fall Apart." According to Jeff Walls, "We'd gotten a little bored with the Southern Gothicisms, and we made a conscious effort to rid ourselves of the rootsy conceits that we had indulged in, because, by then, there were so many other groups mining that sound." This expanded, remastered Rhino Handmade release presents 2X4 in its entirety, plus 11 previously unreleased bonus tracks, including outtakes from the album sessions and demos recorded in 1985-86. 2X4 is available as an individually numbered limited edition of 2,500 copies.
TRACK LISTING LITANY (LIFE GOES ON) (3:41) UNDER THE YOKE (4:28) GET OVER IT (3:00) LITTLE BIRDS (3:57) THINGS FALL APART (2:44) LET THE BIG WHEEL ROLL (2:40) AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING (2:07) WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD (3:13) NEW BORN (4:41) WINDS OF CHANGE (2:55) SAY PLEASE (2:10) 3AM (4:12) LIPS OF STEEL (3:28) HOME (Joe Blaney Mix) (2:44) SHANGO (4:34) IT'S TIME (Demo) (2:32) CARRYING THE TORCH (Demo) (3:03) JUST AN EXCUSE (Demo) (3:06) LIPS OF STEEL (Demo) (3:39) UNDER THE YOKE (Demo Version #1) (3:08) WINDS OF CHANGE (Demo) (3:26) GET OVER IT (Demo) (2:21) 3AM (Demo) (4:00) TUTTI-FRUTTI (Demo) (2:05)