The Cosmopolitans: Wild Moose Party (Dionysus)
release: Springish
styles: New Wave, Post-Punk
rating: ***1/2

Do you ever want to drop acid and travel in your mind back to a better time, probably before you were even born, when musicians weren’t ashamed to let loose and make cool-looking fools out of themselves? If so, then perhaps you should break out your best flip-wig and give the Cosmopolitan’s Wild Moose Party a spin.The album doesn’t contain any new music, but it might sound new to you if you weren’t hip enough to swing with the NYC new wave crowd in 1980. the cosmopolitans, two downright groovy chicks named Jamie K. Sims and Nel Moore, started as a North Carolina based experimental dance troop and turned into an awesome party band in which the girls sang, played keyboards and harmonica, hand clapped, baton twirled, and danced their asses off in front of a slew of different drummers.The girls' sound has an obvious B-52’s wild side, but is backed with a cutesy tongue in cheek feminist attitude (think Thee Headcoatees and/or the Slits). the compilation is genuinely old school, collecting studio sessions as well as live performances, including their best known single, "(How to Keep Your) Husband Happy", (inspired by the notorious Debbie Drake fitness album with the same name), and my personal favorite, "Chevy Baby", a weirdly voiced tale of a New York Post "true" story of a couple who trades in their baby for a chevy. hey, sounds like a good deal to me. -Shannon K Ronan