16 Garage & Glam Rock album reviews, 2008-2009

From my Last Roundup column in a magazine called Harp, in the final year of the 21st Century’s fist decade. An inordinate number of these came courtesy of drunken brawlers from Down Under and/or bands marketing themselves on website CDBaby. At least four bands are at least fronted by women; others by men who dress like them.

ATOMIC BITCH Promnite (Top & Bottom)

This augmented co-ed La.-via-L.A. duo’s “Rock’n’Roll High School” is not a Ramones cover, and a bigger production budget would help their hooks pop out more. But they still manage to get some glittery ’80s Cali pop and glammy ’80s Cali rock color into their sound, somehow appropriate for songs about grooming appliances used as deadly weapons. That’s the apparent theme of “Suspicious Hair Dryer,” which picks up indie-cred from Pavement-via-Blur woo-hoos and specificity from brand names (Maytag, Sunbeam) and pink hair curlers. “Hillbilly Swing” — partially about lemon merengue pie and getting tied up – mixes early-Bowie high notes with a bit of twang. And front-lady Ursulla is consistently enticing, whether she’s singing about sharing her leather jacket with one boy or telling another to slow down.

BOSS MARTIANS Pressure In The Sodo (MuSick)

Brash brats pledge allegiance to their low-rent Seattle neighborhood while emphasizing organ parts, shoplifting guitar hooks from Nugent and the Knack, and retaining their garage beat and high registers at fast tempos. Jack Endino mixed them, they thank Little Steven in their booklet, and Iggy lends backup vocals on the alphabet-not-astronomy toon “Mars Is For Martians,” so they’ve got connections. But swooping starry-eyed like the Records or dreaming too much like the Electric Prunes, they’re anything but single-minded in their exploration of pop-rock’s abandoned nooks and crannies. They’re not afraid to pomp things up, and by the excellent “Elsie” at album’s end they’ve finally figured out how post-prog proto-hair-metal punching bags Aldo Nova and Night Ranger might have sounded as punk rock bands.

THE COSMOSONICS J.u.n.k. Rock…For Lover$! (Riffhaus)

These minor-league Pittsburgh glamsters look too middle-aged to be partying so hard, but that doesn’t stop them from pulling off “Hangover” (which still sounds fairly drunk) and “S&M” with a gusto the Wildhearts or Kix, let’s say, might approve of. “”Bubblegum Bluez” gets its bubblepunk riff from “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones; “Hollywood” is the heroin-weary Exile On Main Street rip at the end. By then, everybody needs a nap.

CRASH STREET KIDS Transatlantic Suicide (Hot City Recording Company)

Clearly men out of time, these glam fans from Phoenix take their name from a Mott the Hoople title, and have proven most convincing in the past when their mid-Beatles/early-Bowie souped-up rock-pop inches toward old metal. Their latest depicts them as jetboys touring the friendly skies on its cover, and gets theatrical inside – divides itself into an Act 1 and Act 2, and tracks like the four-part mini-opera “Dressed In White” partake in a fruity ornateness that aging fans of Queen and Todd Rundgren should recognize. If slow spans risk wilting like Oasis, more rocking moments demonstrate fluency in early Alice Cooper and perhaps Redd Kross. The N.M.E. and Berlin-era Bowie get name-checked, as well they should. And “Cigarettes and Starf*ckers” (asterisk in original) is the best song not thanks to its coke and groupies, but rather because it sounds so much like Ian Hunter.

DIVINING RODS Love Letter To The Dead (Divining Rods)

Reference points, first: The liveliest (also most rockabilly, and most Blonde on Blonde) song is called “Jeffrey Lee,” so Gun Club are clearly part of the equation; the band’s got concrete connections with the Wipers, too. But mostly, these Oregon noir-blues rockers are yet another bunch reviving a shtick the Birthday Party more or less invented (there’s a couple of those every year) but making less tedious music than Nick Cave has for the past quarter century. Chris Newman’s somewhat flat and blowhardy vocals tend to get lost beneath the considerable churn, though guitars find magnificent ways to kick in as songs progress; best example of the latter is “Death Eye Dog,” the album’s most blatant Jim Morrison simulation. Also notable: sax parts in “Killing Ourselves” and “Love Letter To The Dead.” (Detect a recurring theme? CD cover is a graveyard, natch.)

DUNGEONS AND DRAG QUEENS Meat N’ Potatoes (Dungeons & Drag Queens)

Behind a seat-of-pants CD cover reminiscent of Springsteen and/or Loverboy, four Sacramento smart-asses revive the crass powerpoppish energy, sense of humor, lack of pretension, and good old-fashioned sexism of forgotten provincial early ’80s hard rockers (Kings, Fools, Tazmanian Devils) who tried to hitch rides on new wave’s doomed skinny tie bandwagon. The AC/DC rip “Cooperstown” would seem to concern baseball; the number that equates a “blueball queen” with a sea monster has Sex Pistols riffs; the old-timey hoedown “Rent My Time” doesn’t come off corny; “A Streetcar Named Zephyr” stars a girl with a gun; and the cross-dressed closer “Gash Ain’t For Me” (she’s a kind of a drag, always smoking a fag, chasing women around, only half a girl) could easily pass for some lost ‘70s androgyne-genie classic. Chorus harmonies get goofy, voices party in the background, the band wants to French your fries, and the Greeks don’t want no freaks.

THE GREATEST HITS For A Good Time Call (Desert Island Discs)

These Hanoi-rocking northwest corridor glam-sleazers lure the horny by putting what I assume are two fishnetted groupies (if not two of their sisters dressed up like groupies) on their CD cover. And though more studio time might’ve added heft, lyrics chronicling hangovers and aphrodisiacs and well-axed melodies worthy of Enuff Z’Nuff if not Faster Pussycat win out. “Fatal Reaction,” which grabs you quick by ripping “Homicide” by 999, has a more user-friendly “now I lay me down to sleep” nursery-prayer than the one in “Enter Sandman”.

THE JACKNIVES Cobra Combat Boots (myspace.com/thejacknives)

Down Under co-eds (girls outnumbering guys) pick up their hatchet-crazed Melbourne cowpunk where Tex & the Horseheads left off. The vocals get buried too often beneath the tombstone soil, but especially when the dirges swing into a psychobilly shimmy – in the almost-glam “Running Hot” and Stoogely “Best Be Dyin,” for instance – the graveyard comes to life. And if Kylie Kreme’s vocal in “Selling It” dips too much into Amy Winehouse kitsch for comfort, all is forgiven when she shouts out to some pot-bellied pig.

LEGLESS Finding Mr. Perfect (leglesstheband.com)

Life isn’t pretty, so Schoolgirl Amanda, Policewoman Shazza, Nurse Ra, and Virgin Bride Imaj dress up like zombies while offering their tonic for the Aussie Army troops: a heavily accented, glam-rumbling, Girlschool-reminiscent concoction that jokes and drinks as hard as it rocks. They invent a dance called the “Hip Thrust” that sounds more like “the head butt” but which they promise is nothing like the Y.M.C.A. or chicken dance or twist or Monster Mash (which rhymes with the Clash); they tell you to look at their eyes not their chest while they steal fake Asian notes from the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese”; they celebrate foolish nutters and falling knickers; they rap like rockabillies and goth like hippies and close with a speedy marsupial folk madrigal. And though on their earlier 13 Killer Tracks they were already begging to be bitten while initiating fights between Freddy and Jason, this one’s got the riffs to bring old stiff Bon Scott back from the dead.

MIKE & THE RAVENS Noisy Boys!: The Saxony Sessions (Zoho Roots)

First formed as Vermont teens in 1960 then disbanded two years later, legend has it, when local police arrested them for playing a rock’n’roll record over the community church belfry’s PA in the middle of the night, these recently reformed-but-unreformed sexagenarians don’t play garage rock, per sé – at least, not in any accepted Nuggets-associated definition of the term. Their reported signature song, the album-opening skate-rink homage “Roller, Roller Rollerland!,” is high-volume jump-blues halfway evolved into Chuck Berry; their album-closing title track, a 7:40 mess subtitled “Too Stupid For Radio,” drowns itself in feedback and interminable repetition that puts nutcase G.I. Joe troupe the Monks to shame. Proceedings between aren’t devoid of meh moments (the crazily titled yet run-of-the-mill blues-pop of “Sweet Potato Red Sez Polly Don’t Ride” for instance), but more often turn and face the strange: no-wave-guitar-twisted boogie novelties about wolf women, ditties about sissies, frat-rock going funk-reggae, disco rhythms switching into rockabilly rapped like Jerry Reed over a riff that could almost pass for “Cannonball” by the Breeders (“I Be Rockin’ With Mrs. Benoit.”). Maybe not a selling point: Mike Brassard’s singing frequently bears a startling resemblance to “Addicted To Love”-era Robert Palmer.

NIGHT RANGER Hole In The Sun (VH1 Classic)

Yeah, that Night Ranger. Not only are Jack Blades and Co. still around; they recently even entertained the troops at Guantanamo. Their late ‘90s Seven and Neverland are smarter and more muscular melodic rock albums than you’d ever suspect, and so is this one; in fact, give or take the inspirational-piano blandout “There is Life,” the most ignorable track here may well be the “bonus” acoustic retooling of their eternal Boogie Nights Nerf-metal prototype “Sister Christian.” They have more luck with a lovely unplugged-Zep-style update of 1983’s “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” but the real keepers are new music: Power-funk metal with pompy chord progressions in “Tell Your Vision”; Marilyn Manson horror beats under Judas Priest overdrive and clearer singing than either in “You’re Gonna Hear From Me”; Everclear verses surrounding a sterling ‘80s hard-pop chorus in “Whatever Happened”; Electric Six-as-Robert Palmer machismo in “Drama Queen.” They even do a “Rockstar” song – take that, Nickelback!

OTHER FOOLS 12 More Lies (Of)

Titles like “Asshole City” and “Guns Down Or Go Down” betray an obligatory Turbonegro influence, but where these Swiss blisterers truly earn their leather is “Cruisin’” and the unexpectedly moving ballad “How To Forget You,” steeped in the sleazily Eurotrashed homoerotic passion of Turbonegro’s unjustly forgotten ’80s Swede forebears, Leather Nun. Opening balls-to-the-wall biker blasts “Too Late” and “Baby Radio” – the former about missing the bus, the latter about scoring a hit – are closer to bubblegum Motörhead; closing theme tune “Other Fools” quotes both “Whole Lotta Rosie” and “Highway To Hell” outright.

6FTHICK On The Rocks (Spooky)

The Jacknives thank this Queensland quintet in their notes, which makes sense, given that their grunting marsupial pigfuck constitutes the brutal sort of art-blooze schtick Nick Cave hasn’t pulled off since Birthday Party days (sorry, Grinderman didn’t half cut it.) Opens with a spaghetti-western instrumental, and for an unlucky 13 tracks, the guitars give up enough muscle and beauty to keep things chugging even if the verbals almost never sink in. Though the ones in “Live Girls,” about a strip bar, and “Euthanize Our Love,” about forgoing makeup sex, come close. Shipwrecked crew-of-sailors cover motif adds manly credibility, somehow.

LABRETTA SUEDE AND THE MOTEL 6 Not Food Hungry (Charlie Horse)

Distillers types from New Zealand; best when they stay hopped-up Cramps-style and occasionally speed up Misfits-style, and avoid the Courtney Love emoting that leaves wild gal Labretta awkward. Riffs heavy out often enough, and the “New Orleans” remake barrelhouses along fine. But the highlight is “Holler,” about living in a roach-infested flat below jerks who make the bedsprings squeak upstairs.

UGLY STICK Still Glistening (Hover Craft)

More reunited unknowns, these ones from Columbus and with a sole previous 15-year-old album on their resumé, and thankfully more provincially normal-sounding than press-bio Pixies references let on. Which isn’t to say average; Pixies rips happen every day, but it’s a rare band that could pull off the good-natured country-cooked garage-beat pop of “Little Lynn” or “Left To Lay” or “Jerry Can’t Make Me.” Ugly Stick manage guitar raveups (“Intro”) and droning dolor (“She’s Sick”) just as handily, too. In simpler times, “Soul Satisfaction,” a one-way conversation from a very awkward nerd-date, might well have been a college-radio hit: “What’s your favorite kind of monkey? Do you like collecting things?”

VICEROY Viceroy (Bushwood)

From Illinois locals, a more consistent album of quality no-bullshit melodic hard-rock than the Stone Temple Pilots — much less the eternally overrated Foo Fighters — ever managed. Urge Overkill maybe used to make albums this good, but they were being way more tongue-in-cheek about it. Just about every cut has a humongous hook or three that kick in within a couple listens; favorite is probably the Aerosmith circa Rocks rip “Better Dance,” though “I Want To See You Shine” is an excellent STP/Who hybrid. The rest ranges from the Babys to the Sex Pistols: in retrospect not such an insane span at all.

Harp, 2008-2009