Butterflies Don't Go Away

by Majesty Crush

Overview

Released on two pieces of vinyl, and in a digital edition identically sequenced for streaming and download, Butterflies Don't Go Away comprises the majority of what Detroit's Majesty Crush released during their early- to mid-'90s existence. Its first half is Love 15, the band's Elektra-distributed album from 1993, and the second half bundles up most of the material from their handful of independent EPs and singles. The set was prefigured by a rightful lead-off role on Third Man Records' Southeast of Saturn, a 2020 compilation subtitled "Michigan Shoegaze/Dream Pop/Space Rock." Those subgenres are practical if inexact classifications for Majesty Crush in terms of chronology and sound. Michael Segal's ingenuity-over-proficiency guitar stylings had enough swoop-and-crash action to enchant shoegazers, the band's imagination was fueled by dream pop neologists/paragons A.R. Kane, and their rhythms resembled those of ultimate space rockers Loop whenever Hobey Echlin's bass pulsations locked into Odell Nails' circular drum patterns. No band of any stripe or era, however, had a frontman like David Stroughter. An eccentric and leering live-wire figure who wrote fanatical lyrics about stars of the small and large screen, and of the tennis court, he sighed, quavered, and howled about his obsessions, and those of the characters he portrayed, like a true one-off. Stroughter had a vision in "No. 1 Fan" of taking out anyone who got between him and his femme fatale, and when it was revealed that he'd "kill the president," it became apparent that he was writing from the perspective of John Hinckley. His conviction in that song is as strong as it is in the trudging "Brand," a very personal-sounding confession of dependency. Stroughter just as effectively wrote clever fiction like "Penny for Love," wherein an enterprising suitor becomes a sex worker to pay for time with another sex worker. That it's related as a merry pop song, and was conceived immediately after the singer was released from false arrest for armed robbery, is something else. Not included in this package are respectively tense and wiry first versions of "Grow" and "Penny for Love" (the dutiful Numero Group reissued both digitally) and "Bestower of Blessings" (from Sans Muscles). Also floating out there is the self-released A Vintage Crushed by Your Own Feet, a half-live/half-studio 1991 cassette, the band's Graveyard and the Ballroom. Still, Butterflies Don't Go Away is fulfilling. Fred Thomas' in-depth essay tells the story of a band cut short by misfortune and fragmentation. Just as important, the printed lyrics confirm for old listeners that, yes, the seething Stroughter is indeed positing "I get the feelin' that you wanna fuckin' poison my tea" in the maelstrom of "Purr." Majesty Crush might not have been on the brink of a mainstream breakthrough, but maybe there's an alternate universe where they continued to make their peculiar razor-stuffed pop confections and became as known as any of the bigger bands with whom they shared a stage. ~ Andy Kellman

Product Details

Release Date:	03/29/2024
Label:	Numero
UPC:	0825764122436
Rank:	28034

Tracks

1. Boyfriend
2. Uma
3. No. 1 Fan
4. Brand
5. Purr (Interlude)
6. Seles
7. Grow
8. Pretty Head (Interlude)
9. Cicciolina
10. Penny for Love
11. Skin (Interlude)
12. Feigned Sleep
13. Horse
14. No. 1 Fan [EP Version]
15. Worri
16. Horse [EP Version]
17. Sunny Pie
18. Cicciolina [7" Version]
19. Purr [7" Version]
20. Space Between Your Moles
21. Seine
22. If JFA Were Still Together
23. Ghost of Fun

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Majesty Crush   Primary Artist
Odell Nails   Drums
David Stroughter   Vocals
Hobey Echlin   Bass
Michael Segal   Guitar

Technical Credits

The Nehra Brothers   Engineer
Majesty Crush   Composer
Carrie Kelly   Cover Photo
Will Lovell   Lyric Transcription
Jana Gautschy   Project Manager
Darryl Norsen   Design
Odell Nails   Composer
David Stroughter   Composer
Judson Picco   Editing
Michael Graves   Mastering
Hobey Echlin   Composer
Michael Segal   Composer
Rob Sevier   Reissue Producer
Ken Shipley   Reissue Producer
Tim Pak   Engineer
Dave Feeny   Engineer
Fred Thomas   Liner Notes
Mike E. Clark   Engineer