[mp3] PRICKLY

Prickly - "Pale Green Pants" (mp3)

During their existence I didn't get just where Prickly, who sounded to me like something off those LPs my mom had when I was little with flowy-skirted women standing near trees on the cover, fit into indiepop as a movement; sure, in theory indiepop contained enough variety to include something like Prickly, but in practice they stood out relatively sore-thumb-like. Yet the few people that knew them talked about the band as if their music captured exactly why they liked the scene in the first place.

Now I have the perspective to see the stylistic thread running consistently from Prickly back through Barbara Manning and Salem 66, as well as a bunch of New Zealand bands; still, this feels weirdly alien and cold to me even though the intent must be just the opposite.

"Pale Green Pants" is the only Prickly song that ever really won me over; I don't know what, if anything, it has to do with the Dr. Seuss story that scared me half to death at age 5 about the pale green pants with nobody in 'em.

[Off their 1997 mini-album Velleity, all of which is posted along with this song at their remaining fragment of website.]