DiabloGato
Snake Oil Salvation
(Rum Bar Records)
It wouldn't surprise if these maulers' mugshots adorned post-office bulletin boards. Elements of open-throttle Rockabilly snake through Punk furiousness that sneers its coldness toward virtue. Upon listening closely, one discovers that darkly sophisticated wordplay elbows space in this land of advanced intrumental furor.
Recommended: "Heaven's Gate," "Fire and Powder," "July 1969," "Lost Highway"
Videos: "Fire and Powder" "Lost Highway"
Rose and the Maddox Brothers
The Truckers Jukebox Present...
(Burn Rubber Recordings)
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So storied is the quintet facing us that introduction would be squandered wordage. Their fetching way with European-birthed melodies filtered through humble American Southern experiences romped spiritedly. Accents and cultural inclinations imbued old airs with affable hay-bale audacity. The jocularity that often winked from between bouncing barnyard rhythms wreathed faces in ear-spanning grins. Rose and her brothers were in the midst of Rockabilly's proletarian genesis.
Recommended: "Ugly and Slouchy," "I Gotta Go Get My Baby," "No Help Wanted," "I Wonder If I Can Lose the Blues This Way," "Wild Wild Young Men," "Paul Bunyon Love," "I'll Make Sweet Love To You," "Hey, Little Dreamboat," "Stop Whistlin', Wolf," "I Gotta Woman (the Death of Rock'n'Roll)," "A Short Life and Its Troubles," "Did You Ever Come Home," "I'll Go Steppin', Too," "My Little Baby," "I've Got Four Big Brothers," "False Hearted," "Looky There Over There," "You Won't Believe This"
Video: live (:26) "Ugly and Slouchy" "No Help Wanted" "Wild Wild Young Men" "Hey Little Dreamboat" "Stop Whistlin', Wolf"
Ichi-Bons
"Get Away" / "Heart Attack" 7" or digital
(In collaboration with Ugly Pop)
Ripsaw fleetness. This Toronto Garage-Punk three stormed across May stage flooring alongside English hearties The Damned, and their newest is limited to just 400 black-vinyl copies. As difficult as it may prove to secure one, then, the greater challenge will be convincing lucky turntables to relinquish it. (Assuming anyone would be so inclined.)
Video: "Get Away" (live)
The Granite Saints
Union Jacked UK Mix!
(Self-issued)
Four agitators join shoulders and raise ruckus that staggers. Spitting-mad bar-chords slam past one another as tempos race under relentless whip. At the onrush's core huffs tunefulness that makes no apologies for stabbing brains.
Recommended: "Bloody Valentine," "Til the Day I Die," "Red Hill Ghosts," "The Real Enemy"
Video: "Red Hill Ghosts" (live)
The Brains
"Evil" single
(Cleopatra)
Like being thrown down concrete steps into a dungeon and digging each contusion. Abetted by similarly focused-on-mayhem cohorts, Rene De La Muerte haunted studio circumstance to wreak an unsettling monster-season manifesto. Ever relished in his songcraft is near-claustrophobic architecture's hurtling on febrile bat wings.
Back In the Day, 1965
Del Reeves
...Sings Girl On the Billboard LP
(United Artists Records)
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Bird-dogging may be less conspicuous now than in Opry icon Del's heyday, but biological compulsions endure unmitigated. (Without them, I wouldn't be writing these words and you wouldn't be reading them.) Winking tracks loped in a season when flirtations were acknowledged as compliments. (Del followed this with the jocular "Women Do Funny Things To Me.") The steer-horned and chrome-festooned drop-top in which Del's chuckling rakishness cruised was as first-chair as any Nashville offered. Such was their Country-fried succulence that these songs populated innumerable truck stop jukes. (On Amazon, the unopened platter is priced at $201.00.)
"They say that hemlines are gonna be much shorter this year / That sounds like mighty sweet music to my ear. I wouldn't have you to thinkin' I'm the wrong kinda guy / I just sorta got an eye for the finer things in life."
Recommended: "Girl On the Billboard," "Eyes Don't Come Crying To Me," "Strangers," "Three-Time Loser," "Nothing To Write Home About," "Belles of Southern Bell," "I've Got a Tiger By the Tail," "I'm a Long Way From Home," "The Race Is On"
Video: "Girl On the Billboard" / "Belles of the Southern Bell" (live on 1965 TV)
The Bullet Biters
Serial Drowner 7" 3-song EP
(Bad Billy Records)
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With two decades in their past, Finland's Bullet Biters perpetrate so sharply as to crush lessers. Bursting forth is neo-Rockabilly transmogrified into beastliness. Experience shouts its worth. The triad nimbly executes unanticipated switch-ups, stomping in creature creepers. Cuts were drawn from a forthcoming full-length release; Bad Billy advises just 200 black-vinyl copies of this sampler will feel buyers' hands.
Recommended: "Serial Drowner" (At presstime, only this track was available for study.)
Video: "Serial Drowner" (live)
Rocky Kaminski
Live! From the Garbage Truck
(Crabatodia)
"A thrilling apocabilly Jazz experience," gasps the Bandcamp account of this experimentalism gone gaga. Theremin hitches with a standard lineup, traversing territories mysterious. Striking among luring attributes are saxophone weavings (that sometimes, curiously, evoke visions of betasselled flying carpets circling Pluto) and, well, unnerving throat histrionics. Crunched guitar shards wallop. Ensemble players of such caliber they've opened for Reverend Horton Heat and the Koffin Kats. Magnetically eccentric.
Recommended: "Star Cruise," "Sleepin' on the Side of the Road," "Undead King," "Garbage Truck," "Philornis Fly," "Bottonless Pit"
Video: "Sleepin' on the Side of the Road" (live) "Philornis Fly" (live)
