The Things: Outside My Window (1986)

While many of us who enjoy talking about music revel in the obscurity of our taste, relishing our supposed cred garnered by embracing music well outside mainstream popularity, you can't help but feel a little sad when one of your favorite albums is all-but-nonexistent, seemingly consigned to the dustbin of history.

The Things' Outside My Window, their second of three albums, is a delightful slice of Paisley Underground retro-psychedelic pop, probably most closely aligned with the Rain Parade's legendary debut Emergency Third Rail Power Trip.  Shades of late 60s Nuggets-anthology garage rock bands like Paul Revere & The Raiders crossed with the Byrds and Love, the album is full of great hooks, hugely catchy, with psychedelic shadings, the occasional wah-wah guitar and organ sound shading the otherwise straightforward mid-80s college radio jangle pop.

The garagey title track, the delirious "Everytime," and "You Can't Deliver" are all stellar tunes which deserve more than the fate to which they were left.  Like the rest of the band's work, this is long out of print, never seeing an official CD release, and unavailable on streaming services, so you're left searching YouTube and the backwoods of the internet for snippets. (I've got an old vinyl copy ripped to mp3, and would kill for a nice digital remaster.)

Here's the video for "Outside My Window":

 Here's "Everytime":

...and "You Can't Deliver":

...and "Look What You're Doing":

 Finally, here's a live version of the title track:

While putting this together, I found a fascinating interview with Things frontman Steven Crabtree, discussing the band's history, with serious and emotional ruminations on what it's like to not quite make it big as a band.  It's a full-blown lengthy documentary but worth a look: