L.S. Underground
Also credited as L.S.U., LSU
Huntington Beach, California8 reviews across 4 releases
L.S. Underground, also credited as LSU, was a California project formed in 1986 by Michael Knott. Knott was its central songwriter and performer, although the personnel and recording setup changed over time. The early music drew on punk and post-punk, with gothic atmosphere and hard-rock guitar; by This Is the Healing in 1991, the sound had become dark, brooding alternative pop built around loud psychedelic guitars, punk vocal lines, and, in places, a drum machine. Its oddness was deliberate: "Hummingbird" paired multilingual operatic singing with a line about the hummingbird and human lust. Grace Shaker widened the palette into acoustic, worshipful, and alternative-pop passages, while Dogfish Jones turned toward an Irish sailing tale filtered through psychedelic rock.
In 1993, Knott announced that LSU would be renamed Cash in Chaos, although the LSU name continued on Grace Shaker and Dogfish Jones. The project remained fluid. Dogfish Jones was made in roughly two weeks, used sailing songs contributed by Knott's father, and brought Gene Eugene's Hammond B3 into the guitar-heavy sound. By 1999, Definitive Collection assembled material from at least nine albums, combining LSU recordings with Knott's solo work rather than documenting a single lineup. After several quiet years, Knott announced in 2008 that a new LSU recording had been made with Joshua Lory and Jim Chaffin among the players; PTSD followed under the L.S. Underground name in 2010. Michael Knott died on March 12, 2024, at age 61.
4 releases reviewed
This Is the Healing
Grace Shaker
Dogfish Jones
Definitive Collection