The Year. Interlude 2: Homemade, stapled-together super-limited EP

((So Cow will feature on this list more conventionally, don't worry, but as well as the excellent I'm Siding With My Captors, his output this year featured another work worthy of note. Destined to be apocryphal, this CD-R in a hand-daubed canvas sleeve did not fit the mandate of the list. But, being Ireland's best ever musical product, it would be criminally remiss to leave anything he made out the yearly reckoning. So I asked the infinitely more qualified Bobby Aherne of HiFi Popcorn, State and Dublin Duck Dispensary to do it.))

So Cow - Wackity Schmackity Doo
Unreleased
Like Mr. McCausland before me, I shall begin this intermissionary kudos by speculating as to why our Stupefied host has neglected from including my assigned album on his rundown. Perhaps it's because the status of Wackity Schmackity Doo as an actual album is ambiguous; despite its 13 tracks, its creator instead prefers to refer to it as an EP. Or perhaps it's because it remains sinfully unreleased; its existence confined to 25 CD-Rs sold in Galway's Roisin Dubh on a night in early September. Another likely reason is that it would be slightly unorthodox and overly-enviable for one young man to hog two spaces on a 'Top 25' list for a year in which hundreds of very worthwhile albums reared their heads; a fact testament to Brian Kelly's high status as Ireland's Europe's very own Jay Lindsey.

Wackity Schmackity Doo (taking its title from a Patton Oswalt gag) was conceived and birthed in a single weekend in So Cow's garden shed. This might explain Kelly's less-wrought-than-normal lyrics, as well as some of the more off-kilter bits, but it does little to explain the colourful splashes of snotty yet adorable punk rock (like the any-other-band-would-kill-for 'Outskirts' or 'The 'You're Nice' Mysteries') or the band-jamming cohesion of this curt solo experiment as a whole. It may not be a concept album, but it does have a conceptual timeline: So Cow welcomes you to his radio station (102.4FM), So Cow wants to be your boyfriend, So Cow thinks he was a bad (shitty, even) boyfriend, So Cow gets bored singing about relationships and instead composes some R.P.G. video game soundtracks and strums a mandolin for a few minutes before returning with an earnest reimagining of the 'Only Fools and Horses' theme tune. The Wall it ain't, but these impromptu eccentricities are what make it - only twelve weeks after its creation - a lost classic.

So actually, in summation, the most likely reason that Those Geese Were Stupefied is omitting this strange and sparkling gemstone from his 'Best of 2008' list is so that he can feature its inevitably celebrated reissue on his 'Best of 2028' list. For those who wait, good things can't fail to come.

((Bobby is the default James Boswell to So Cow's Dr. Johnson, as proven by this interview. If you need this CD-R, your best bet is some sustained pestering.))