The Lookalikes (USA)*--"Life-o-phobia"--released 1996

Part 1: 1. Love Song While Running Away 2. From a Stranger #1 3. Life-o-phobia 4. Gravy Blubber Spam 5. Old Man 6. Fool In Love The Authority Trilogy: 7. i. You Don't Get To Have Fun 8. ii. Primal Scream 9. iii. U Can't Touch This 10. Rescue Me 11. From a Stranger #2 Part 2: 12. Arthur Murray's Dance Nightmare 13. Let's Go To The Dance 14. Faces on the Buildings 15. Wind and Water 16. Falling In Love With... 17. Watching Watching 18. Needles 19. You Whip Me 20. You've Lost Everything 21. From a Stranger #3 22. Gentle Ballad of Love (plus 3 hidden super-secret bonus tracks, 2 of which were not on the original cassette.)

This is a great album. We agree with Rough Trade recording artist Jeffrey Lewis (see quote above). We agree with "Juno" soundtrack star Kimya Dawson, who expressed fan-love for its opening song in this interview. We agree with Prewar Yardsale's Mike Rechner, who wrote this hallucinatory review. You are supposed to have it.

This is an expanded CD rerelease of a 1996 cassette album release. It is a song cycle about existential cowardice, with subthemes of death, masochism, Seattle, and personal ads as a prayer against loneliness. Half the songs were written by Steve and the other half are by the great Alex Wolf. (A few were co-written.) After many years of being mistaken for each other, we named our duo the Lookalikes [or Lookalikes (USA)*].

A recent reassessment by its usually self-critical authors: Time has been uncannily kind to the album. If anything, it seems to be far more at home in our current era than in the era of its birth, due to several unpredicted cultural aesthetic drifts and paradigm shifts: Home recording is now hip! Quiet is hip! Vulnerability is sexy! "Looping" is ubiquitous! (We called our punky homemade analog tape version "snowballing.") And...Everyone finally admits to using dating sites! Yet Life-o-phobia still feels experimental, risk-taking, un-cliched. And yet further....pretty. rockin'. melodic. deeply felt. well-crafted. fun. catchy. sad. angry. honest. ironic. painfully sincere. funny. eclectic! cohesive! and kinda crazy! We predict you will agree.

When recorded in a basement apartment in Seattle in the early 1990's (mostly 1992-3), this quiet-ish material was out-of-step with the ubiquitous local/national Grunge sound. The Lookalikes (USA) almost never performed live out of insecurity, lack of a visible like-minded music community, and lack of appropriate local venues. The open-reel 4-track home productions, while careful and creative, were unslick enough that we didn't even try to shop it to a label. However, the music found a home once the Lookalikes discovered the NYC Antifolk community a few years later. The duo released a cassette run** of several hundred copies, which sold out quickly. Perhaps it even influenced or inspired some of the better-known music from the scene which followed shortly thereafter? Probably. The duo now plays occasional, well-attended reunion shows when geographically possible. (Alex lives near Boulder, Colorado, Steve in NY.)

The CD package includes a confusing "Sing-along Sheet", neat cartoon & photos, and technical & neurotic liner notes. Most songs feature piano and acoustic guitar, but you will find appearances by the homemade 19-string Electric Tennis Racket, the 5-string Log-a-rhythm, super-detuned electric guitar, some strings, some (analog feedback-looped) drums, a funky clavinet, and the broken childhood trumpet of The Young Fresh Fellows' (and REM's) Scott McCaughey, bought at a garage sale.

The Lookalikes (USA) recorded 3 newer songs in December 2001 with Do Peterson engineering. These songs can be downloaded for free here and at Myspace.com. Alex recently wrote a song cycle called Lisa Colorado which Do Peterson produced lavishly (with Lori DeGloria singing lead), and has a whole new batch of songs on the way.

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