(2020) Pulsallama - Pulsallama


Review:
Unless you obsess over the minutiae of Ann Magnuson’s career or still curl up with your tattered copies of New York Rocker late at night, it’s a good bet you’ve never heard of Pulsallama, an all-female percussion ensemble who were the toast of New York’s Lower East Side underground scene for about two years in the early ’80s. Their recorded legacy was small: they released two hard-to-find singles on a U.K. indie label and cut an album that never came out when financing dried up. Thankfully, in 1983, at the height of their hip cachet, Pulsallama recorded a live set for French radio in a New York recording studio, and those seven songs have been given commercial release for the first time in 2020 on an EP simply titled Pulsallama. There’s an arty side to this music that speaks to Pulsallama’s hip downtown leanings, yet there’s also an unpretentious sense of fun in the way the songs play out amidst the layers of rhythm laid over Jean Caffeine’s trap drums, Judy Streng’s bass lines, and the group’s massed vocals. The funky, home-brewed grooves are just right for the witty, absurdist lyrics about low-impact international romance, demonic possession spoiling suburban life, and musical travelogues of exotic lands. Vocalists Kimberly “Princess” Davis, April Palmieri, and Wendy Wild sound just right whether they’re harmonizing, singing in unison, or yelling like cheerleaders. The percussive talents of Min “Bone Finder” Sanchez, Stacey Joy Elkin, and the rest of the ensemble are not always exacting, though their enthusiasm and commitment to their half-Latin, half-Tinkertoy instrumentation more than make up for their flaws. (Ann Magnuson, who became a successful actress and the vocalist with Bongwater, was out of the group by the time this was recorded, though she was a founding member and gave the project its name.) And the spirit of this music — half punk rock “anyone can do this” nerve and half high school talent show eagerness — is irresistible. Pulsallama isn’t a major archaeological find in the field of lost groups of the past, but this EP confirms that the band deserved to be documented for posterity, and it should fill up the dance floor at your next New Wave Nostalgia party.





Tracklist:
01 - Ungawa Pt. II (Way Out Guyana)
02 - Temple of the Sun
03 - Rhythm Method
04 - Trash
05 - The Devil Lives in My Husband's Body
06 - Ulsapay Amallay
07 - Oui-Oui (A Canadian in Paris)


Media Report:
Genre: post-punk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits