Track Listing

1. Flowers
2. Pictures
3. Parking Lot
4. Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste
5. Temperature's Rising
6. Oblivious
7. It's Getting Late
8. Instrumental
9. Tugboat
10. King of Spain [#]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22016 in Music
• Released on: 1997-04-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Album Description
Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this 1988 album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. Columbia. 2008.

From the Label
Includes "Instrumental" by Galaxie 500 the featured song in the upcoming Honda Acura television campaign!

Hailed in Boston as a masterpiece, "Tugboat" set the stage for Galaxie 500’s first album, Today, which they recorded with Kramer (for $750) in the summer of 1988. Melody Maker called the LP "an astonishing debut by anybody’s standards," and indeed it is. The incredible, supple beauty that Galaxie spun like straw was so sweetly melancholic that it all but smothered you. Damon’s drums drift with the simmering presence of jazz classicism, Naomi’s bass is rich with dreamy emotional content, Dean’s guitar completes the aural landscapes begun by ‘69-era Sterling Morrison, and the vocals emerge from the Ouija board of eternity. A highlight of Today is the incredible primal-drone-hunch treatment the band gives to Jonathan Richman’s "Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste." The three extra tracks from this session, included on the box set, would have made Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore fiercer in his declaration of Today as "my favorite guitar record of 1988."

Customer Reviews

bliss
While this album has many merits, I think it's greatest is that it was recorded in 1988. Admist the hair bands, Reaganomics, and Members Only jackets, Galaxie 500 managed to create a near-perfect album of warm, fuzzy psych-pop.

When I first read about Galaxie 500, I could tell they were a musical missing link for me- creating a bridge between standard indie-pop fair and beautifully woven pyschedelia, all the while remaining simply and truly romantic. This is a make-out album, from the utterance of "I could be there when you're sleeping, I could be there in your dreams" on the opening number to the song "Tugboat", which relies on a scant few lyrics to cultminate in what may be the best love song
never to make it to radio.

While Naomi's solid bass work provides a backbone for the album, the lead guitar evokes memories of the acid rock of the 60's and 70's with seering, sparkling riffs. Not that the pop of those decades has been forgotten either; Galaxie 500 can go from brooding to bubble gum so subtly you never notice until the music has built to a roar as warm and dense as it is undeniable.

Think of this as proof that just a little soul survived the ravages of the Me Decade.

A long time of listening
Galaxie 500 has been as faithful to me as the best woman in the world could be (as far as the women go, that's never happened). TODAY is a great album to listen to if you're tired, awake, drunk, sober, in love, out of love, lonely, social, and most importantly quite sick of things that most think of as "great." It is entirely moody, much like most individual's personas. It can be very dark, but has such beautiful melodic texture so the darkness is masked in a way. A brilliant, brilliant piece of work from a band whom broke up too early. Not only is it a classic, but it was on Rough Trade...I owned it on that label, lent it to a high school girlfriend and never saw it again.....like the album, bitter and romantic.

This is their best.. 10 stars?
Euprhoric aural melancholia. Beautiful stuff.
I saw G500 for the first time at the Rat in Boston opening for the Pixies. Not many G500 fans in that crowd.

I was there to see the Pixies whom I'd never heard, but who were said to be good. I'd not yet heard of G500. This album had only been just released according to Dean. I think I cried listening to them play. We left during the Pixies set as I started to get asthmatic from the smoke and the crowd started to bash around like crazy.