Recorded in 1988 but not released until 1990,
Pitchfork's
Eucalyptus is primarily notable for being the first offering from singer Rick Farr and guitarist
John Reis, who would later form the much more accomplished
Drive Like Jehu. Recorded while the two were still in their teens,
Eucalyptus sounds like the work of a pair of smart but unformed suburban adolescents who have had their musical world changed by
Squirrel Bait,
the Meat Puppets,
Rites of Spring,
Sonic Youth, and the later SST Records catalog, plus cheap weed and Schaefer beer. A couple of tracks, notably the psych-poppy "Placebo" (which sounds kind of like the group's rough contemporaries
Screaming Trees), are surprisingly strong, but most of
Eucalyptus sounds like first drafts of ideas that would come to fruition later in
Drive Like Jehu. [Interestingly, the three bonus tracks, from the vinyl EP Saturn Outhouse, fare better: "Thin Ice" has the nervous rush of indie forebears like
the Embarrassment, "Sinking" recalls the more reflective moments of
Mission of Burma, and "Goat" is pure 1991 grunge, a few years too early. Farr and
Reis have both dismissed this early band as juvenilia, but this reissue is more interesting than many similar near-forgotten relics.] ~ Stewart Mason