When the whole garage rock revival/scam was taking place, Portland band The Hunches filthy, blown out take on the sound was something of an underground phenomenon that only a handful of privileged/deranged folks seemed to get. The nasty, and visceral no-fi of the group was just as good as the early output of The Black Lips, or the King Khan and BBQ collaborations, but for some reason, The Hunches just didn’t seem to care about getting anybody to notice. Their career lived, and now may have officially died on the In the Red record label with the release of twelve songs on the album Exit Dreams. In these dozen songs, the group straddles the line between The Pixies at their most subversive (check track three, “Not Invited), and the more drunken moments of The Cramps in their early incarnations just fucking around.
These songs are hardly bad as a deathbed statement – especially as the last flickers of life die out in a sloppy mess in the final minutes of the closing track “Swim Hole”, but I can hardly think that this isn’t the last time I will hear from The Hunches, as I prepare myself for twenty years down the road when they are re-discovered as on of those long lost treasures that never quite got their due in their own time.
