Given how bracing and rough they could sound, 1980s Boston trio Volcano Suns were impressively multi-dimensional. There's humor in their lopsided beats and wise-guy lyrics; muscle in the fuzz and grit of their spilling guitars; catchiness in their power-poppish melodies; and a classicism in their sing-along choruses. Take "The Mouth That Roared", from their 1985 Homestead debut The Bright Orange Years (recently given deluxe reissue treatment by Merge, along with the band's follow-up, All-Night Lotus Party). Opening with blurting horns and a hard-headed beat, it rides Peter Prescott's loudmouth hollers over a subdued bridge into a soaring, anthemic climax, finally collapsing with his dying wail. Not bad for a simple 4/4 post-punk song.
If that anthemic part sounds familiar, that's because it was also a hallmark of Prescott's previous band, Mission of Burma. He naturally brought a lot of the rhythmic juice and songwriting skills he had honed in that group to Volcano Suns. But while MoB were an equal melding of three personalities, the Suns were distinctly the brainchild of Prescott, who sang, drummed, and wrote most of the songs. Before you can even begin to admire such multi-tasking, Prescott mocks it on Bright Orange's insta-classic opener, "Jak": "Jack of all trades and master of none," he snarls. "How can a person get anything done?" The propulsive melody answers that question, as does the rest of this masterful record. From the ascending instrumental "Truth is Stranger than Fishing", to the charging punker "Cover", to the unabashedly pretty "Cornfield" (featuring a rambling piano solo), Volcano Suns can seemingly do no wrong-- and when they do, it sounds like they know it and are ready to make things right again. Even the nine bonus tracks (including a surprisingly earnest live cover of Prince's "1999") offer little to complain about, and lots to love.__
Released a year later, All-Night Lotus Party doesn't quite catch the debut's magic. With fewer brain-sticking melodies and swelling choruses, it favors the blunter end of the Suns' spectrum, with overdriven songs that tend to blur together. Still, there are gems like the swinging "Sounds Like Bucks", the beatific "Room With a View", and another perfect opener, "White Elephant"-- a pithy ode to an obsessed collector who becomes just another possession in his crush's romantic stockpile. Merge's addition of some frenetic covers (the Beatles' "Polythene Pam", Amboy Dukes' "Journey to the Center of the Mind", even Spinal Tap's "Jazz Odyssey") pushes the reissue back toward the kind of reckless fun Bright Orange is drenched in.__
Volcano Suns would make another album for Homestead, two for SST (including the sprawling 2xLP masterpiece Thing of Beauty), and a 1991 swansong for Quarterstick, Career in Rock. All are fine expressions of Prescott's idiosyncratic vision, which in turn has rippled back through the recent work of Mission of Burma Mark II. But as a summation of his many talents, The Bright Orange Years has no peer.
