ALL ABOUT JAZZ . com: this one just in! Do check it!
"[Something Grand is] worth its own weight in Ming period porcelain.."
MOJO -
October 2004:
"Something Grand reveals a band not so much ahead of the herd
as way beyond it .. playfully following their own rules and still dazzling
over a decade later." (FULL REVIEW JPEG BELOW)
DUSTED
MAGAZINE . com
"As
far as assessing the band's place in history, their influence goes deeper
the more you hear them. .. Hyperbole runs thickly through the critical
landscape (as it always has and almost assuredly always will), but Shrimp
Boat can shoulder any accolade you would care to bestow upon them. They
lived this music and loved it, and these are sounds that things like commerce
and age can't touch."
Read
Jason Dungan's' entire long-form review
POP MATTERS
. com
"To have so much by them become available now is thoroughly unexpected
and fantastically satisfying."
Read
Chris Toenes' entire long-form review
SPLENDID
ezine . com
"Something Grand might just be the best 2004 release that you
haven't yet heard. If so, correct this oversight straightaway!"
Read
Christian Carey's entire long-form review
NO
DEPRESSION
"[Something
Grand] is manna, obsessively and lovingly circumscribed manna, from heaven.
.. Shrimp Boat was the arty party band of the quaint bohemian village
that was late-80s Chicago. They were simultaneously playful and cerebral;
they played with an openness and sincerity that was uncommon then and
is possibly extinct now. - ERIC BABCOCK
CHICAGO
TRIBUNE
" .. the legendary Chicago band Shrimp Boat, whose unique fusion
of jazz, bluegrass, folk, rock and just about everyting in between made
it a pioneering touchstone of the Chicago 90s music scene. .. Something
Grand is a beautifully packaged boxed set [which] documents each stage
of the idiosyncratic group's evolution, starting with home-recorded gems
from 1987 and ending with material from 1992, just as the band was dissolving.
.. If the group formed today they'd probably be hailed as geniuses."
- JOSHUA KLEIN
ROLLING
STONE
"The Chicago post-rock scene of the Nineties - the pneumatic rhapsodies
of Tortoise, the chamber pop of The Sea and Cake, the tone poetry of Gastr
del Sol - starts here, with the twisted-country and art-garage games of
local legends Shrimp Boat. .. the group made three albums but also this
multidisc set of work tapes ranging from arch minstrelsy to exultantly
cerebral pop - Pere Ubu high on the haystack mysticism of Harry
Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music." - DAVID FRICKE