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SAVAGE SLICES: Reviews by Eric Savage
CHUCKANUT
DRIVE – “Fidelity Grange”
(Ragtown Records – www.chuckanutdrive.net)
Hidden in the suburbs of Seattle, and apparently
not making it out of the area much --- which
is a shame --- is this alt-country combine which
actually sounds more Texas grit than Seattle
cool. Actually, think about Son Volt, but with
more rock touches and with a more approachable
singer than Jay Farrar (and with more accessible
emotional content but without the whining).
Or, and just as appropriately, think The Band
or Bruce (in the “I’m On Fire mode)
with a more country approach and a lot more
swing to them. The band’s sound revolves
around principal songwriter and lead singer
Steve Leslie, a Texas native with a grainy and
worn, but still warm quality and a Townes Van
Zandt feel to his songwriting. Lead guitarist
Loren Huggins is firmly in control of his Nashville
licks and can push it harder when needed, assisted
by occasional touches of horns, pedal steel
and a bit of a gospel choir. This is a band
which seems like it could be just as comfortable,
and work the crowd equally well at Billy Bob’s
and Maxwell’s. Occasional small glitches
in production don’t really interfere with
the enjoyment of the record which should get
them a deservedly wider audience.
LANTERNS.
– “Apocalypse Youth” EP (www.myspace.com/wearelanterns)
The EP starts out with a blast of distortion
with Love-like intonations, then cranks into
a hard-driving blaster with reminiscences of
Cheap Trick and Sonic Youth. For the next four
songs, they joyously, and loudly, pound out
energetic pop-oriented tunes, with plenty of
distortion, twists in the rhythm and hard-hitting
bass lines which hold up some pretty tuneful
stuff. It’s a good introduction to what
the band can (apparently) do and suggests that
they could get a room moving quickly and with
good reason. All that makes the end disappointing,
an overly distorted, navel-gazing momentum killer
“Electric Warrior Kisses” which
apparently seems designed to lead to some kind
of powerful emotional climax, but really on
leads to hitting the “stop” button.
Too bad – the first four songs carve out
a nice space in that indie/emo universe with
a lot of energy and repeatable tunes. A full
album of that would be very well worth hearing.
MAD
ANTHONY - EP (www.phratryrecords.com)
This Cincinnati four-piece band is largely
based on former members of The Black Scabs and
their five-song EP is a solid appetite-whetter
for more. The orientation sits somewhere in
the mid-space between garage and punk, slightly
more pumped up than the former and more melodic
and with more developed musicianship than the
former often displays. They claim the Cramps
as models, and the lyric have Cramps-like sci-fi
and horror movie references (“When I fell
asleep I was myself/But when I woke up I was
someone else;”) but musically, Fugazi,
the Damned, even the Hives come more to mind.
The band displays a more sophisticated than
usual sense of building melodies, and throws
in rhythm and tempo changes without sounding
like they’re trying to impress anyone
(except perhaps on “July 24th”,
the last selection, where the momentum gets
dissipated by too many shifts. Adam Flaig’s
lead guitar provides a sonic glue above an accomplished
rhythm section and some good original songwriting.
Here’s hoping there are more songs in
the can somewhere and that they’ll be
released eventually.
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