BoDeans - Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams

Mid-80s rock’n’roll revivalists’ debut still meaty

Waukesha, Wisconsin singer-songwriters and guitarists Kurt Neumann and Sammy Llanas formed the BoDeans in 1984 as teenagers. Quickly inked to Slash, they released their acclaimed debut album Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams in May of 1986. Augmented by the rhythm section of bassist Bob Griffin and drummer Guy Hoffman, and benefiting from the producing acumen of T-Bone Burnett, their singular songs were full of contagious rockabilly riffs, immediately engaging vocal harmonies, twangy guitars, slinky grooves and a genre-melding sound that’s the essence of rock’n’roll.

This expanded reissue leads off with the album’s original 11 songs (crisply digitised and remastered) and, bonus-wise, includes several early, revelatory demos. A separate hour-long DVD contains a well-shot, energetic 17-song set of the band at the legendary, Prince-associated Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue. Filmed mid-summer of 1985 it actually predates Love and features many of the tracks that would make the album cut, including the unforgettable lead song She’s A Runaway, the reggae-rimmed Still The Night, melodic pleader Say You Will (Mitchell Froom adds some haunting organ on the album) and the girlfriend blues Misery, with an effective, particularly nasally lead vocal by Llanas. Buddy Holly is smiling somewhere.

Slash/Warner Bros/Rhino | R2 517640 (CD+DVD)

Reviewed by Gary von Tersch
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