''Love Tara'' is the first full-length album by Canadian

indie Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Gaming *Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies *Indie game, any game (board ...

band

Eric's Trip Eric's Trip is a Canadian indie rock band from Moncton, New Brunswick. Eric's Trip achieved prominence as the first Canadian band to be signed to Seattle's flagship grunge label Sub Pop in the early 1990s. The band had a minor hit in alternative ...

. It was their first release on

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

's Sub Pop record label and their second not independently released, as well as the first album by a Canadian act to be released by Sub Pop. The album was self-recorded in three months and reflects Sub Pop's shift toward lighter, more melodic music from the grunge on which it initially built its reputation. Though the

lo-fi Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The ...

quality of the record threw many listeners and critics off, it was still very well received in both Canada and the United States.

Critical reception

Mike Bell of the '' Calgary Herald'' praised the album as "Simplistic, charming, front-porch

folk-pop Folk-pop is a musical style that may be 1) contemporary folk songs with large, sweeping pop arrangements, or 2) pop songs with intimate, acoustic-based folk arrangements. Recording production values created a unblemished style that appealed to ...

with melodies that stick like a gradeschool tongue to a flag pole or rock riffs that sound like a dysfunctional

Partridge Family ''The Partridge Family'' is an American musical sitcom starring Shirley Jones and featuring David Cassidy. Jones plays a widowed mother, and Cassidy plays the oldest of her five children, in a family who embarks on a music career. It ran from Se ...

jamming in the garage." In '' Chart'''s Top 50 Canadian Albums of All Time polls, ''Love Tara'' ranked 35th in 1996, and 37th in 2000. It was also ranked 39th in

Bob Mersereau Bob Ellis Mersereau is a Canadian arts journalist.Rockingham, Graham �"Randy Bachman: lord of the song"''The Spec'' He is a music columnist and longtime arts reporter for CBC Television in New Brunswick.The Top 100 Canadian Albums ''The Top 100 Canadian Albums'' is a book by journalist Bob Mersereau, published in 2007 by Goose Lane Editions. Mersereau surveyed 600 music journalists, retailers, musicians and disc jockeys of all ages, from all parts of Canada, who each submi ...

''. At the 2017 Polaris Music Prize awards ceremony, the album won the jury vote for the Heritage Prize in the 1986–1995 category.

Influence on other musicians

Sloan covered the song "Stove" in the 1993 compilation album '' DGC Rarities Volume 1'', which combined "Stove" into a medley with "Smother", a non-album track that Eric's Trip recorded for the '' Never Mind the Molluscs'' compilation. The title of the album was referenced in

The Tragically Hip The Tragically Hip, often referred to simply as the Hip, were a Canadian rock band formed in Kingston, Ontario in 1984, consisting of vocalist Gord Downie, guitarist Paul Langlois, guitarist Rob Baker (known as Bobby Baker until 1994), bassis ...

's song "Put It Off", from their 1996 album '' Trouble at the Henhouse'': "I played ''Love Tara''/by Eric's Trip/on the day that you were born".

Track listing

References

1993 debut albums Eric's Trip albums Sub Pop albums Lo-fi music albums {{1990s-indie-rock-album-stub