VIA PRESS RELEASE | “A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns ditches MBV as a reference point; the band has rediscovered pleasant, straightforward guitar pop. “Any Place I’ve Lived” is the best melody Heasley’s written to date; “Jenny, Andrew, and Me” (a Tsunami reference?) has a clever strummed solo over knotty chords.” —Douglas Wolk, Trouser Press
The opening guitar riff and drums of “Ginger” became widely recognized in the mid-nineties through use in the notorious CK1 Commercial, as part of Calvin Klein’s Unisex Fragrance ad campaign playing constantly during American late night television. Also used in the Cadillac 2007 summer event campaign, “Ginger” has been touted as the first indie rock song ever used in corporate advertising. The song “Any Place I’ve Lived” is heard during the closing credits of the 2006 film, Keeping Up With the Steins.
These recordings, made in Philadelphia between 1993-1994, present what Kurt Heasley, Lilys frontman, founder, and sole constant member, terms as “a maximum listen, that properly represents the transitional phase” between the 1992 Slumberland Lilys debut In the Presence of Nothing and 1995’s Eccsame the Photon Band (reissued by Frontier Records in 2015).
This 2021 version of A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns (also reissued with Frontier) has the previously unreleased track, “G. Cobalt Franklin” which replaces the track “Glosseder” on the original 1994 10 inch (the song will be avail. on the digital version). The songs “Elsa,” “Coby,” “Timber,” and “Hymn” recorded in 1994 during the demoing process for Eccsame The Photon Band, were shelved, then released in 2000 as the “Lilys/ Aspera Ad Astra” split EP.
