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ROLLING STONE
Out There with David Fricke
THE SWIMMING POOL Q's
Royal Academy of Reality
Original New Wave kin of The B-52's and R.E.M., Georgia's Swimming Pool
Q's were a brainy pop-art band exploring the deep weirdness of modern
Southern life, closer to the Fab Four than to Gang of Four. On The Q's
first album since 1989, singer-songwriter Jeff Calder unleashes a
backlog of big questions ("What Is Beyond") and bigger dreams ("Light
Arriving Soon") in pocket symphonies of silvery guitars and warm-water
singing: Abbey Road wrapped in kudzu. "My mind is a cloud," he sings at
one point, "and the cloud is loud." That's my kind of reality.