The Needy Visions

Boston Phoenix Live review:
Boston’s Needy Visions started the night with their oh-so-infectious garage pop. Hearing the Visions perform “Weymouth,” a song about getting drunk, stoned and jumping into the ocean, so close to winter time left a mega-warm, albeit bittersweet, impression and it seemed as the set progressed, the songs became more deranged and guitar driven. Even better: watching the faces of a bunch of teenagers react to singer/guitarist Dan Shea banter (“We remain the Needy Visions, here’s a song”) and introduce songs called “Dudes in the Night,” “Fuck the System” and “Neil Young’s Coke Nose.” “Is this guy for real?,” I imagined. And hoped: “This is fucking rock and roll, bro.”

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Unfortunately (though not intentionally – I just can’t help it), it’s not often that I get into a new album that I can wholeheartedly describe as “fun”. The Needy Visions, on the other hand, mention smoking weed in several songs on the same album, have a song called “Havers of Fun”, and the opening line on this album is “We’re just a bunch of dudes hangin’ out”. Their music is – and I mean this in the most affectionate and complimentary way possible – pretty damn dumb. They can’t play their instruments that well, the singer has a relentless, abrasive yelp, and the lyrics are regularly just plain stupid. The Needy Visions aren’t good in spite of these things, they’re good because of them. This was the soundtrack of my summer and I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve listened to “Mac’s Big Secret” (a song about a friend who played a bit part in an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” as a child), one of the catchiest damn choruses I’ve heard in the last decade. Another reviewer summed it up much better than I can: They “cling to life despite its most valiant efforts to be terrible. What’s the deal? Why haven’t I turned this off? Something’s good about it, but I don’t know what. Can’t be the tunes, can’t be the singer, certainly can’t be the musicianship. It’s just fucking got that glow, like in The Last Dragon.”