Rediscovering Erik Voeks

This month's post celebrates the quiet career of pop rocker Erik Voeks.   Though not that well known, Erik has put out a sparse catalog of top quality Power Pop over his 15 year career.  Erik grew up in Australia, moved to the states where spent time in St. Louis. He has been living for years in Kansas City.  His earlier 1990's output as tangentially associated with the Champagne, Illinois power pop movement  - since Adam Schmitt and friends played on his album "Sandbox".   That album is a classic with crystal clear production and great songs throughout. Keith Klingensmith's Futureman label has done a great service by rereleasing that album in digital form.  If you have don't have this classic, you owe it to yoursef to download a copy now.    

Over the last three years, Erik has been relatively active, releasing a series of singles and EPs through Bandcamp. I recommend heading over there and supporting Erik by downloading those tracks.  You won't be disappointing.  Uniformly excellent work there.   I recently completed a compilation of those recent tracks and I'm convinced that if these were issued as an album, they would easily end up on my best of list.

To drum up interest in Erik, I'm posting a set of hard to find singles and demo tracks from early in Eric's career.   There is absolutely some great material here.   Give these tracks a listen and please let me know if you have any additional rare Erik tracks (I know that I am missing the double sided single, "Desire Me and Die" and "Or What?" as an example).   I would appreciate the chance to complete my odds and ends collection.

1 Grey Rain Town
2 I'll Be The One
3 Up Periscope
4 Reasons
5 Throw Me Out A Line
6 When Will It All End
7 Cruel Tide
8 Queen of Cans and Jars (Guided By Voices Cover)
9 Christmas Singles
10 Pristeen
11 Girl
12 Descending From a Daydream (Live)