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Recordings
Discography, reviews and selected free downloads from 1990 to present day.
A limited supply of the 1990-92 cassettes are still available for $5 USD each. Contact us if interested.
Wooden Circle (2012)format: compact disc, download Stream, download and buy CD at Bandcamp (best deal: $8 USD includes CD and all downloads) Or, if you prefer, it's also available on CD Baby, eMusic, iTunes, Amazon and Google Play
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Wooden Circle is Mud Pie Sun's first full-length release in 20 years. The album continues the duo's usual themes of summer sun, impending doom, cicadas, feedback, tall pines swaying in the night, middle age, loud combo organ, the sky open wide, two sisters in the fifties, ba ba ba ba ba da de da, farfisa mornings, red Trans-Ams, barking dogs, Kay twelve-strings, lovely stories about the coast of California over a tea, square waves, painted ponies going up and down, red Harmony six-strings, wet blades of grass, elderly men lost on the side of the road, and young people going in circles with no way home. Plus a Gene Clark song. Written, recorded and mixed at Franklin Street and Sprague Street on the trusty Porta Two 4-track (3,5,7,13,14), the iffy 488 8-track (2,4,6,8,9,10) and the occasional digital contraption (1,11,12). Recording started in the summer of 2004 and ended in the summer of 2011, except for guitars on “Daily Drone” which were recorded at Church Street on the Porta Two in the winter of 1993. Mastered by Carl Saff. All songs written by Steven and Tom © 2012 Semipermeable Songs (ASCAP) except for “So You Say You Lost Your Baby” written by Harold Eugene Clark and published by Gene Clark Music (BMI). |
New Swing Mood Things/Two At Noon (1992)format: cassette album, selected downloads
A.New Swing Mood Things:
B. Two at Noon:
Side A written and recorded December 1991 - Feb 1992 at Tom's and Steven's homes in West Philadelphia and West Chester, PA. Side B recorded live at Tom's house Jan 19, 1992. Released on cassette April 1992. All songs © 1992. Also available on Acid Tapes as TAB 097.. "Someone I Know" is on the Acid compliation tape Open Channel D (TAB 100). "Where You Belong" was also released in 1994 on the Town and Country #1 compilation on the Sedimental label. Apparently still in print and orderable from both labels! ReviewsThis is a home-recorded duo (Tom and Steven), dabblin' in the moody rock sphere mined by bands like American Music Club. Mud Pie is sorta low-fi, but sometimes the arrangements and sound are dead on and amazing for 4-track recordings. Side one is done with overdubs and planning; side two is "live" at home, with amplified acoustic guitar, stand-up drums, and vox sounding cool and edgy. Plus, there's a Jacobites cover! Lawrence Crane, File 13 #15, Concord, MA Another enjoyable release from Tom Quinn and pals. Not as overly joyous as "These Days", but still posessing qualities of vision and charm. This hints at acoustic Rain Parade or early Dream Syndicate (when Kendra was around), and is lazy enough to call up Nikki Sudden as well. Some nice electric guitar swirls added in various places too. One to lie on the roof to. Recommended. |
These Days (1991)format: cassette album, selected downloads
Side Everyday:
Side Anyday:
Written and recorded by Steven and Tom (with help from Rob on 3 songs) Oct 1990 - April 1991 at Tom's and Steven's homes in West Philadelphia and West Chester, PA. All songs © 1991. Released on cassette June 1991. Also available on Acid Tapes TAB 086.. ReviewsReally amazing lazy guitar based pop music on this band's 3rd tape. "Sister Lovers", "Kaleidescope World" & "Fakebook" are all good reference points but these guys are hardly derivative. Everything one could ask for is here - no pretension, great songs, some nice production touches, and a 4-track recording to keep it simple. Truly inspirational. Rob Forman, ND 5, Austin TX Driving around and hearing that first Dream Syndicate song that you heard and jumping ahead to 1991, wondering if it could be done again? Ladies and gents, Mud Pie throw their disgust at you from Devault, PA, which is probably near I-81. A fine road...driving, droning, the songs are standard but they manage to add a place to bathe. It has a hearbeat and sound. Drug-addled, demagoguery, demented, dire, dependent, doom-laden - anything starts with D, Dream Syndicate...uh...dull?? Nah, with the right hootch, it would sound delightful...I'm bored but mud pie? I'd eat one just to get high!! |
Rustle (1990)format: cassette album
aside:
bside:
Written and recorded by Steven, Tom and Rob Aug 1989 - April 1990 at Tom's and Steven's homes in West Philadelphia and Germantown Philadelphia, PA. All songs © 1990. Cover art by Suzanne. Released on cassette June 1990. Also available on Acid Tapes as TAB 074.. "Who I Was" is on the Acid compliation tape High Everybody (TAB 072). ReviewsMud Pie are an auto smash between a Morris Minor loaded with the solo recordings of Syd Barrett & a souped-up Dream Syndicate at their most experimental hot-rod. Many have no doubt been asking "where's the American answer to all the marvelously idiosyncratic home four-track thinking that flows from the islands of New Zealand?" Devault, Pa., a town much closer to Philadelphia than Stockton is to San Francisco, gives us Mud Pie, three people that take all the usual instruments and manage to do something slightly different with them. They mix electric and acoustic guitars, bass, various percussion and vocals in the low-key way that the tape title implies, occasionally rising to what might be loud by living room standards. It seems like the usual 8 track or 16 track recording studio (and the engineers that come with them) crossed with the usual rock band instrumentation yields a fairly predictable sound, in terms of the way the instruments are layered and juxtaposed in the listening field...Home recording encourages smart people to try different approaches if only to get around the technical limitations of the medium - there's no way to get a huge drum sound even if you want to. Mud Pie combine good use of the sounds at their disposal with effective lo-fi electronic manipulation and pretty good songwriting to top it off. The feel of the songs is fairly moody; the melodic/lyric style reminds me mostly of the first Dumptruck record, although when the guitars are loud the speak-sing vocal sits half buried in the mix like Mark C. on a Live Skull record. Mud Pie started life as a more conventional noisy guitar trio, but this incarnation suits them much better. Perhaps the one self-released cassette this issue that you should take the trouble to write away for. |
