Snider, Todd – Crank It, We’re Doomed (2-LP)

Aimless Records, 2-LP, 2024

“Lost” album from Todd Snider, featuring previously unreleased songs, recordings, and versions. For the uninitiated, Todd Snider’s most hard-core fans are affectionately known as “Shitheads.” If you’re a Shithead, you may have heard of an album called Crank It, We’re Doomed, the 2007 album Snider shelved before its release for artistic reasons. Crank It, We’re Doomed was recorded during an especially fertile period for Snider, and after he decided not to release it, he included five of the tracks on his next two albums — Peace Queer and The Excitement Plan. Snider was trying out new ideas during the Crank It sessions. He experimented with the garage rock sounds he would explore further in coming years as Elmo Buzz and the Eastside Bulldogs. He also mixed folk and funk concepts for the first time, a blend he experimented with for more than a decade before perfecting it on 2021’s groundbreaking First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder. So if nothing else, Crank It, We’re Doomed is a historically important album because it foreshadowed much of what followed.