Clam Dip And Other Delights [EP]

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Before Soul Asylum made the jump to A&M Records, they delivered one final EP to the independent Twin/Tone label, 1988's Clam Dip & Other Delights, the title and cover offering a playful "tribute" to A&M co-founder Herb Alpert. While in many respects it was an odds-and-ends package, Clam Dip showed that A&M had made a wise choice in signing the band (and that it was Twin/Tone's loss). In its original form as released in the U.K., Clam Dip offered four strong originals as well as two covers (Janis Joplin's "Move Over" and Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero") which offered a glimpse of the sloppy joys of a Soul Asylum live show where they would descend into playing beer-fueled covers. "Just Plain Evil" is a satisfying excursion into heavy rock, "Chains" takes Blondie's "One Way or Another" riff and turns it into something fresh, "Secret No More" sounds like it would have fit right in on While You Were Out, and "P-9" is a fine acoustic number that allows Dave Pirner to indulge his folkie side. And if "Juke Box Hero" pushes the joke a bit too far, they tear into "Move Over" with ferocious gusto. After Clam Dip became a strong seller as an import, Twin/Tone issued an American edition, with "Artificial Heart" and "Take It to the Root" replacing the two covers; the former is a weak exercise in studio dawdling, but the latter is a fun bit of end-of-the-set rave-up. In either form, Clam Dip & Other Delights was a worthy addition to Soul Asylum's catalog, a loving gesture to their fans, and not a bad summing up of how far they'd come in just four years.

© Mark Deming /TiVo