Bubbling up from the underground. Pulsating from the heartbeat of the punk clubs and rock stages. Surging from the heart of middle America. A return to true, earnest rock and roll. Maybe it's a reaction against the overly-produced drivel that fills the airwaves. Maybe it's a statement about getting back to our roots, to what's core and meaningful. Shit, maybe it's all in my mind. All I know is that the Ripple Office has been inundated recently with a barrage of quality, back-to-the-roots of rock and roll albums from a diverse cross-section of bands. And I for one, couldn't be happier. They all do it in their own unique way, and they all kick my ass.
So let's get to them.
Featuring ex-members of such punky bands as The Blackout Pact, Only Thunder, Ghost Buffalo, Love Me Destroyer, and Pinhead Circus, Tin Horn Prayer come out of the speakers like a methamphetamine-fueled Tom Waits with a major chip on his shoulder and a suicide complex. Man, does this one kick me upside down of Tuesday! Major roots Americana here, including banjo, mandolin, and accordion thrown into the mix with the (mostly acoustic) guitars, bass, and drums. These guys go way outta their way to prove that punk is a state of mind, not a function of electricity. "Better Living," just may be one of my favorite lead-off tracks I've heard all year. Yeah, we got that mandolin kicking us off in all it's spartan beauty, bass and drums bubble underneath before the whole band launches into just a monster of an acousti-folk punk song. One helluva verse melody and just a choral hook that can't help but capture you like a hangman's noose. I mean one for the ages. Toss in some ridden-hard-and-hung-up-wet vocals and I'm in roots-punk heaven. When I say weathered, I don't mean these vocals are whiskey-aged, I mean they're perfectly leather-cracked, barely escaping from the vocal chords. This song saunters and rocks and funks and grooves, and it's all punk, baby.
"Crime Scene Cleanup Team," may be just about the most clever suicide note ever placed to music. Rather than scrawling a note to those who've wronged him, the author composes his final lament as an apology to the crime scene cleanup team who're gonna have to clean up his house after he blows his brains into a "red Picasso painting on the walls." Take lyrics like that and drop them over a seriously rockin' uptempo, guitar and banjo raver and you'll get a good feeling where these guys come from. Earnest? Hell, yes. They're like an unplugged Dropkick Murphys, or a head-on collision between Son Volt and the Street Dogs. Either way, I can't stop listening.
Another beer-soaked belch of churning earnest rock and roll, this time layered with a slacker sensibility and a hint of full-on Replacements instability. Cracking guitar work, layered upon layers bring an old school post-punk indy vibe to this cascading wall of sound. This is pure rawk and roll, layered with years of grit and road dust. Hearts are bared fully on their sleeves, and those sleeves dripping with sweat, whiskey, and a touch of exasperated blood.
Back in the day, we had a band called The Call. Oh yeah. Talk about earnest rock, with Michael Been belting it out as if his soul's salvation depended on it. Only Thieves mine a similar roots-angst vibe, with their chiming guitar assault, spraying punk spit, and pleadingly honest lyrics and vocals. Take a song like "Flood Lights" and I can almost hear Micheal Been's spirit being channeled in righteous indignation (RIP Michael. You left us too soon). That's not to say Only Thieves are revisionist, they certainly aren't. Just take that Call template, inject it full of Replacements rawness, some Superdrag and Lucero punk and indy savvy, and coat that whole thing with the leftover dust from an Uncle Tupelo concert and you'll get the feeling. "All Sad Young Men," masterfully mixes big indy guitars with exploding percussion, pop smarts and punk energy. "Discoveries" does the same with massive tsunami walls of churning guitars and zealot vocals. Springsteen gone punk. I like it.
A do-it-yourself effort that literally reached out through the speakers with gripping hands of fuzzed guitars, grabbed my ears in their icy death-grip and pulled me right back through the circuitry into their insanely hip world of retro-fuzz. stoner-fied, acid-garage mania. A three-piece of brothers Kyle Byrum on guitars and vocals, Kraig Byrum on drums, along with Karl Benge on bass, The White Soots first came to my attention from all the love the fine gents at The Soda Shop have showered on them over the months. And let me tell you, the Soda Shop boys were right. The lava lamp has gone and completed exploded all over these guys.
'60's speed-cranked, retro garage fuzz dominates this blissfully deranged psychedelic haze of pop concoctions. Kyle lets loose hallucination-inducing rivers of guitar solos (as on "If I Go") that are enough to cause cosmic waves to collide in time warped tunnels of psych madness. The Black Keys are here. The White Stripes wish they could be. But don't let all this talk of garage-psych madness put you off, the boys channel enough retro-R&B into their songwriting menagerie to bust out numbers like "Don't Shoot" and "You're Evil," or the pure groovy, gotta-bust-out-my-bell-bottoms hipster-vibe of "Watch the Horizon." Monster-extended, JPT Scare Band-worthy jams like the 11 minute "Give Me Back My Land," and it's fuzz, senses-shattering guitar assault sit comfortably right next to 2 minute plus primal-garage pop stompers like "Where Did You Go." No matter how you slice it, you can't lose.
Now that The White Soots dropped us off in the garage, we may as well stay there, crawling way to the back underneath the rusting piles of moth-holed radiators, oil-stained rags, and sludge-crusted carburetors. Somewhere back there, behind the moldy stack of semen-stained porn magazines you'll find Thee Nosebleeds, doing their damndest to not impress anyone.
Guitars whiz by like drive-by shootings. Drums dissolve into the mix like acid melting through '70's worn vinyl. There's a bass there . . . somewhere, or so I'm told. Probably hiding behind the draino-ate-my-trachea vocals. And amongst all this chaos, you'll find a freaking gem of cocaine-garage punk like "South Street Shooting Spree," or the bathtub-brewed meth speed punk fest of "As Fast as You Can." These guys are so grizzled they eat razor blades for breakfast and spit out metal links that they somehow chain together into remarkably catchy songs like the chemical-freak meets The Ramones blitz of "Kill Kill Rock N Roll/Miss West Philly USA." "Pigfoot's Revenge," works a belligerent blues riff into the mix, while "Motormouth" is simply 440 horse power garage gun metal punk at it's finest.
I couldn't be happier that this album didn't come as a "scratch and sniff" cause there just ain't no part of me that want's to know what these guys smell like. But listening's just fine.
--Racer