CD: ELM 31CD
RELEASE DATE: 1997
LABEL: Elemental

01. Hand Passes Empty
02. Stunt Girl
03. Ex Quartermaster
04. Admirals All
05. Hammerhead
06. Kill Zane
07. Fast
08. Continuity Freak
09. High Divers
10. Absent Luck Liner
11. I Messiah Am Jailer
12. Can't See Anything

Victory Parts is startling in the way it shows how a band can ride out a career-decimating sabbatical, flick two fingers at their hometown's predilection for all things lo-fi and then turn in a twisted mutant of a record that darts gleefully from rock to shoegazing to feedback to pop to using the word 'diadem' to finally, massively, back to rock again. Evidence? It's all over the gaff. The strobe-lit droneathon of 'Hand Passes Empty', 'Stunt Girl''s distorted Space-dust pop rush or the melding of Smashing Pumpkins and Mercury Rev for the howling 'Ex Quarter Master'... Enough ingredients for the next three Bush albums alone, but given these are just the first three tracks, AC Acoustics are lining up conformity's face for a hefty smack in the chops. And so it goes. There is noodling and there is riffing, there is shouting and there is saccharine harmony. But where there should be one confused mongrel of a record, instead there's the swaggering offspring of the band who know they were right to hang on. So just what do you call it? Well, it's the album the Boo Radleys could have made if they'd stayed 'out there'. It's also blessed with one of the most swoonsome noise-pop singles ever in 'I Messiah, Am Jailer'. And it's got the word 'diadem' on it. Translated into real-speak, that means 'crown' - and finally, AC Acoustics are up to wearing it.