Rating: NN
When Bay Area combo Creeper Lagoon emerged from nowhere with 98’s exquisite I Become Small And Go — a bizarre bed-sit pop experiment that owed as much to belt buckles and Bic lighters as guitars and vocals — what made the record special was a complete disregard for the norm. Ian Sefchick and Sharky Laguana simply doodled out whatever was in their heads, using whatever was at hand. Predictably, the mountain of scrapped sessions in various studios with different producers scotched any such spontaneity on Take Back The Universe, such that Creeper Lagoon now sound like a garden-variety rock band with Pavement ambitions, better than average imagery and the odd surprising sonic tidbit. How disappointing. Even contemplating collaborating with Jerry Harrison should have been Sefchick’s first clue.
