Cassette Review: two boys alright "Hazy Realms" (Pillow Scars)

[$5 // Edition of 50 // https://twoboysalright.bandcamp.com/album/hazy-realms]

I'm not quite sure what to make of the name Two Boys Alright, but I just like to think of it as a general version of something like Simon & Garfunkel or Hall & Oates or some other duo I don't want to think about right now.  (Milli Vanilli?)   Instead of using their last names, they seemed to create an apt artist name while also giving a brief description of themselves in the process.    Unless this is one of those Ben Folds Five trickery things, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.   (I looked at their Bandcamp-- there are only two of them)

What begins with the sounds of smoov jazz turns into something off of the second Stone Temple Pilots album.  I know I seem to be referencing this album a lot lately, but let me just say that out of all of the STP albums (and they are one of- if not- my all-time favorite bands) their second has to be my favorite because the first was so good but got caught up in that grunge label where people compared them with Pearl Jam too much and the second just showed how great they could actually be in their own shoes.     Anyway, I love hearing bands channel that; it makes my day.

The songs can sound acoustic or have a heavy fuzz to them but either way they're pretty psychedelic.    It's a certain bit of dreampop mixed with a certain era of The Beatles.   Side B opens with a song that has guitar notes like something out of early Blue October but then it turns into instrumental fuzz.     It's early era Filter (Yes, "Short Bus", the good stuff) and then at the end I do hear the organs which I read about later on their Bandcamp page as well and thought would be more prominent in these songs.

When I first began reviewing music it was 1999 and you had to email people and then get them to send you actual physical copies of things to review because there were just no such thing as these digital files yet.    And I remember some of the first people I emailed were the larger labels, Victory Records being one of the first as I believe the first CD for review I ever received was OS101, but there was a time where I had three top CDs in my rotation and they were for the band Sig Transit Gloria (probably a hundred bands with that name), The Beans (I know there are a Beans from Texas, but I don't think they're the same ones) and Schatzi.

This cassette just brings me back to those days- the days when I'd receive music to review from labels or bands I had never heard of even (I like to call them "blind CDs") and then I'd just fall in love, like, how did I not know this existed?  And when the internet was just a baby it was hard to promote music.    It's so much easier now.   So please take advantage of social media and Bandcamp and do yourself the favor of listening to this cassette.     It's just everything I love about the years 2001 and 2002 and yet also it works so well in the present.    To those forgotten fuzz pop rock bands and those yet to come!