Girls on Medication

"Girl on medication, oh girl of my dream." From out of a cloud of mystical fuzz and feedback, and a sweet guitar riff worthy of classic shoegaze status (think My Bloody Valentine plus the Lemonheads at their peak) comes this lyrical paean to the universe of imperfect, weird love songs, so seldom prominent in pop culture. It's an opening salvo from Vincent Cacchione (aka Caged Animals) and a sampler for his forthcoming full length, Eat Their Own. Cacchione emerged from Hawthorne, New Jersey in 1983, at the same time fellow resident Debbie Harry was moving from Blondie's disco-influenced post-punk into a new wave of future apocalyptic celluloid via Videodrome. In the words of Cacchione, "Girls on Medication" offers a similarly foreboding melodrama of a high school boy and the pill popping, clinically depressed girl he loves. She's not your regular prom girl, and this is not your regular sing-along, but singing along, you will be. B-side, "Transparent Castle" is the result of Cacchione's first experiments with an 808, remodeling doo-wop so that spooky, cavernously echoed Spector-like lead vocals become swathed in weirdly tuned backing harmonies of the Burial generation. It's another potently original blend of dreams.