The 4-Track Adventures of Venice Shoreline Chris (1996)

About this title: In the wake of the breakup of Canadian ska band King Apparatus, singer and guitarist Chris Murray hunkered down in his living room with a cruddy four-track cassette recorder and made one of the best ska albums of 1996, an extremely catchy and good-natured half-hour of snappy tunes and sonic sludge. It sounds as if he used plastic buckets for drums -- and he plays some of the basslines on the low strings of an acoustic guitar -- but to be fair, the sound isn't that much weirder than the one Lee "Scratch" Perry was creating at the height of the Black Ark period. And those songs! "Ex-Darling" is ... read more

Tracks:

1. Rock Steady [Murray]
2. All-Nite Dinah [Murray]
3. Sammy Come a Jail [Murray]
4. Confidante [Murray]
5. Ex-Darling [Murray]
6. The Organizer [Murray]
7. Solomon [Murray]
8. Bring Your Love to Me [Murray]
9. Cooper Station Blues [Murray]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.