The Unfortunate Result of Spare Time
| The Unfortunate Result of Spare Time | ||||
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| Studio album by The Badlees | ||||
| Released | August 24, 1993 | |||
| Recorded | Susquehanna Sound Northumberland, PA |
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| Length | 49:56 | |||
| Label | Sharkstooth Records | |||
| Producer | Jack Pyers and The Badlees | |||
| The Badlees chronology | ||||
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The Unfortunate Result of Spare Time is the second full-length album by Pennsylvania rock band The Badlees. It was approached in a unique way for the early-era recordings of the band. They brought in an outside producer, Jack Pyers (formally of the band Dirty Looks), and they all but abandoned their signature "roots rock" sound that was started on the previous album, Diamonds in the Coal, and would proliferate on their next album, 1995's River Songs.
The fact that the band remained unsigned to a major label after the release of Diamonds in the Coal through 1992 was quite a disappointment to Badlees members, some of whom still maintained "day jobs" and were enthusiastic that Diamonds would push the band over the top and garner some interest from the larger labels. By 1993, as the Badlees prepared to work on their second full-length album, they decided to take quite a different approach.
Jack Pyers had known the national spotlight, as bassist with the hard rock band Dirty Looks in the late 1980s, as that band was signed to Atlantic records and had modest success with a couple of hit albums and a video on rotation on MTV. After Pyers left the band in 1991, he went on to form Sharkstooth Records with some investors in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area. In early 1993, Pyers approached the Badlees about producing their next album, promising a sound that more accurately reflects the energy of their live shows. By this time, the band had already begun performing and developing new material on stage, and already had a new single, "Laundromat Radio" recorded for inclusion on the latest Album Network compilation. Ultimately, the band agreed to try a new approach and took most of the summer off from touring in order to concentrate on the new album.
The resulting effort was called The Unfortunate Result of Spare Time, a title that the Badlees shrugged off as ironic at the time, but have since come to admit to its more literal meaning. It's not that the music is terrible, in fact there's some quite good and interesting material on the album, but the "result" was not quite what the band had hoped for.
"Laugh to Keep from Cryin'" is a steady, building song with an excellent soundscape, while "She's the Woman" has a classic blues-driven hard rock sound with good guitar riffs and excellent harmonica by guest Daine Paul Russell of the Dr. Groove Band. The opening two songs – "A Better Way to Save the World" and "Me, Myself and I" – each experiment with song structure, while on the closer, "A Matter of Time", the band experiments with complex harmonies. "Little Eddie" is a unique number that almost sounds like the Crash Test Dummies-do-Springsteen while the ballad "You're Not the Only One" contains an excellent melody along with a good mixture of guitars and mandolin. "Tore Down Flat in Jackson" is, perhaps, the one song that really captures the original intent of the album, the raw, exciting "live" sound.
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