Review
Medicine
The Buried Life

Give me a few minutes to simply gush about this album (I insist) because while I love the first album from Medicine (Self, Shot Forth Living), I find myself popping this delicious ear candy of a record on a tad bit more; The Buried Life is an excellent sophomore album that shows a definite growth for the band, and the re-issue that comes complete with another plethora of bonus tracks that include B-sides and demos and other unreleased goodies only magnifies how good, and prolific, Medicine was at that point in time.

The Buried Life just seams to up the syrupy sweet pop aspect (perhaps the excellent juxtaposition of the laid back male vocals with that of their chanteuse) of the group (at the point of this record honed down to the three piece of Brad Laner, Beth Thompson, and Jim Goodall) by quite a few leaps, and just maybe the song, “Never Click” is the song that sucks me into the record more often than anything else with its awesome chorus and hook as well as one of Laner’s best performances as lead vocalist (it just kills me, it’s one of those songs that if you were a musician that you wished you wrote or at least I wrote). The other songs that populate the album all bring great aspects to fill out the record like “The Pink” (another great vocal melody that also adds an awesome lead guitar track and infectious rhythmic bounce), “Babydoll” (the chorus on this beast is so awesome), and the awesome groove (which keeps hold of the squealing guitar skronk so well) of “She Knows Everything”. One intriguing addition to the album is that the reissue contains a never before released version of “Time Baby” (arguably the signature song from Medicine) featuring contributions from Van Dyke Parks that showcase a completely different side of the band.

Considering the short conception time or rather the tiny gap in between the original release of their first and second albums, one could conceivably call The Buried Life the more melodic sister album to Self, Shot Forth Living; but regardless, this Medicine reissue further serves to highlight just how good the band is with several of the best tunes (and a host of other good ones) that these guys and gal ever produced making the record in my mind completely essential.