One of only three albums by Vancouver, British Columbia's Doug and the Slugs to manage a U.S. release, 1980s
Cognac and Bologna is a textbook example of new wave bandwagon jumping, but it's not bad for all that.
The Slugs were a fairly standard R&B-influenced pop/rock bar band in the tradition of, say, Huey Lewis and the News, but a little image tweaking and some relatively hip graphics made the group seem like they were a little more daring than they really were. As one can tell from the band name and album title, Doug and the Slugs were wacky. One might even go so far as to say they were zany. This album's minor hit, "Too Bad" (which was used almost two decades later as the theme of fellow Canuck Norm McDonald's short-lived sitcom), is both of the two, right up until the oddly out-of-character violence of the last verse (which was edited out of the single). The rest of the album continues along those lines, mixing the silly and serious to a jumpy brand of rock & roll that has echoes of Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, and Graham Parker, although, of course, not as good as any of them. Still, the best songs, particularly "If I Fall" and "Just Another Case," have their own charms, and Doug Bennett's a pretty good singer, even though the Slugs' backing sounds fairly anonymous throughout. ~ Stewart Mason