One Sock Missing is the second album by the American band the Grifters, released in 1993 on Shangri-La Records. The album was an underground hit. It was reissued by Fat Possum Records in 2016.
Production
The album was in part recorded at Easley McCain Recording, in Memphis, Tennessee. "I Arise" is a bonus track on the vinyl format of the album.
Critical reception
Trouser Press wrote that "Shouse and Taylor (who split vocals) often slip into a laconic saunter that’s a little too close for comfort to Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus’ slacker slump." Billboard called "Corolla Hoist" "one of the great lofi singles." The Staten Island Advance praised the band's "process of chopping, skewing, rearranging and mixing the standard formulas of various musical genres into a whole new ball of wax."
AllMusic stated: "Certainly the most low-key (if not lo-fi) of the Grifters' early records, 1993's One Sock Missing is less noisy and aggressive than its immediate predecessor, So Happy Together." Magnet noted: "Few indie-rock groups of this time pulled off such an emotionally cathartic and powerful mix of desperate darkness, dynamic heaviness, convincingly abstract drug-influenced weirdness, unbelievably infectious and gorgeous hooks, real wall-shredding sheets of noise and discordance, and low-key every-guy approachability."
Track listing
Album credits
Grifters
credited as
Stank Gallimore
Tripp Lampshade
Diamond Dave Shouse
Slim Taylor
Additional musicians
Greg Easterly (Compulsive Gamblers) – Violins and Bass on Wonder
Skronkadelic Orchestra Unlimited on I Arise
Jack Adcock – Gourd
Jimmy Enck – Sax in Tune
Robert Gordon – Jamming Untensil
Fields Trimble (Compulsive Gamblers) – Saxophone
sitting in
Jim Cole – Kwirrr Machine
Sherman Willmott (Shangri-La Records) – Bike Horn
Roy Berry (The Simple Ones)