A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
My record collection
#156: Pee Shy - Who Let All The Monkeys Out?
I first heard of Pee Shy on The Galaxie 500 Mailing List when it was pointed out that Dean Wareham had produced Who Let All the Monkeys Out?, this was probably not long after release. I bought myself a copy pretty much straight away and rather liked it and must admit like it more as time passes.
It was probably just as well that I was a completist because there was some pretty negative comments about it on the Mailing List at the time and I am glad that I ignored them, although the two most vociferous defenders urged people to see them live if they could. Sadly, I never did.
Dean produced all but one track on the album and added backing vocals to the album closer There’s No Room for Your Godforsaken Baby.
There’s not much out there about Pee Shy, considering that …Monkeys… was on a major label.
There’s this chat with Cindy Wheeler from 1998 which dates from between their two albums but hardly mentions either.
This piece in Perfect Sound Forever is better and gives a bit more background to the band.
The CD's secret weapons are the spacious, keyboard-based ballads "You Belong" and "It's the Love." Seasoned songwriters have labored long, tortured themselves, and not produced material that so arrestingly tugs at heartstrings. The songs' materials are simple, the lyrics skeletal. But the voices, giving resonance to key phrases such as "standing at a distance" and "it's not me," make these songs, astonishingly, seem the equals of Stephen Sondheim's most straightforward compositions. It's a shame that Pee Shy never got around to covering Sondheim's "I'm Still Here."
Kurt Wildermuth - Perfect Sound Forever, October 2022
And just to add another Luna connection, they covered Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed on the cassette they put out a year or two before …Monkeys… - and eight years before Luna’s version appeared on the Lovedust single
They released a second album a couple of years later, which I also have but don’t listen to as much (and I don’t think that’s just for DW reasons!). After the band split Cindy Wheeler and Mary Guidera formed The Caulfield Sisters and released an EP which is more… grown up, I guess? I like it a lot. Their Facebook page has been pretty quiet, but maybe they still exist?
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/024
- Artist: Pee Shy
- Title: Who Let All The Monkeys Out?
- Notes: Produced by Dean Wareham
- Packaging: Jewel case
- Format: CD
- Bought around the time of release - no idea from where or for how much
Previously in my record collection: