http://still-single.tumblr.com/post/10162797459/life-partners-music-is-hard-lp-ride-the-snake

Life Partners – Music is Hard LP (Ride the Snake)

“Music is Hard” = best song of 2011, 2010, and I’m adopting it as the official theme song of Still Single. You should just listen to it right now. There are no words now that this song exists. The rest of it is sublime, vacillating between confessional-style divorce pop (in this case, a divorce from liquor, as far as the story of “I Didn’t Get the Joke” is concerned), played straight in the way Ween might do it, but with a more obscurant sense of humor. There’s a reverence here for late ‘70s and early ‘80s MOR, and no one is ashamed. Life Partners’ ballads could’ve come from some heartbroken dudes in 1977 Halifax, but the pokerfaces they hold up to transgressions of sentiment on this album makes them somehow funnier through the sincerity, sketch comedy that’s really as truthful as it is funny. On the flip side, they do these KISS-style bar brawlers with completely literal and ridiculous sentiments (“Lyrics” for instance … Jesus, that song). Frontman Dave Dougan just calls ‘em like he sees ‘em, I suppose, from the frontlines of (the city) Boston’s live-in-a-dive musical mortuary. But the end result is massively entertaining, like (the band) Boston’s second album. Recorded with a muffled thud by working genius Wayne Rogers. “Music is hard. But it seems so much harder for you!” Truer words, amigos. 175 copies pressed, and free downloads at the link above. (http://www.ridethesnakerecords.com)
(Doug Mosurock)