Wednesday, July 16, 2025
'DC Larson authored Flesh Made Music. He was a staff writer for both Rockabilly Magazine and Pin Up America. Freelance credits include Goldmine, Blue Suede News, No Depression, Punk Globe, and Wrecking Pit. DC penned liner notes for the Rockats and Barry Ryan, as well as writing for Robert Gordon's European site.'
The Jive Aces
Keeping the Show on the Road
(Golden Age Recordings)
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"100% 'Yes!,'" enthused Simon Cowell, a 2023 Britain's Got Talent judge, at the conclusion of the ensemble's performance. Granted, that television venue is a family entertainment one, and unlikely to draw seriously hep hoppers. But the Jive Aces harbor the quality of appealing to both sedate toe-tappers and ballroom whirlygigs. (And, as Stan Getz once warbled, the piano player is "swingin' like a gate, doin' Liberace on the 88s!") Whether raising big and bracing Swing stompers or purring passion intimations (and with muscle swelled by vibrant brass), the nattily clad Jive Aces acquit themselves as mongers of tip-top cruisers not heard since our boys in uniform bird dogged Victory Rolled-tomatoes down at the USO Canteen.
Recommended: "Rockin' is Our Bizness," "Clementine," "It Don't Mean a Thing," "La Vie En Rose," "St. James Infirmary," "Baby You've Got What it Takes," "That's Amore," "Bumble Boogie," "Dark Eyes," "Keeping the Show on the Road," "Big Noise from Winnetka"
Videos: "Rockin' is Our Bizness" (live) "La Vie En Rose" "Bumble Boogie" (live at Viva Las Vegas, 2024)
Salvation Alley String Band
Waltzing Alone
(Rub Wrongways Records)
The sole reason the title cut - in whose 1:46 oom-pahs and Country swayings collude - doesn't stand out, is because it's surrounded by leather-tooled richness of equal distinction. There's home-folks gusto at hand, as well as enough sensitivity to put tears in a cowpoke's eyes.
Recommended: "Half of All Weddings," "Lie to Me," "100 Times a Day," "Earth All Along," "Waltzing Alone," "Half My Heart"
Videos: "Half of All Weddings" "Lie to Me" "100 Times a Day"
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The TR5's
A Triumphant Return
(Foot Tapping)
Sparkling "Skiffle'n'Roll" airs, trim tune architecture, and properly clean production are but three qualities that will compel listeners to grab for green. Add in supercharged sanguinity and the truth that those giving rise to this are all sorts of happy. Behold the sound of fun.
At present, A Triumphant Return is available for streaming, 500 CDs can be got, and 250 vinyl units are in the pipeline.
Recommended: "Showdown at the Ace Cafe," "Just Like That," "Until the Dance is Over," "Two Faces of Love," "Take Control," "Please Yourself"
Videos: "Showdown at the Ace Cafe" (live) "Just Like That" "Until the Dance is Over"
Foot Tapping (Music King)
Ro and the Skullboys
Razas De Noche
(Sunny Bastards)
This is the stuff - Psycho en Espanol that wallows exultantly in its 1990s aspect, while throwing freshness at your head. Directed through perpetrations by a toothsome vamp, whose sirenings overwhelm with barbed allure, is a three-warrior wrecking machine as fearsome as it is tightly wound. Most likely to be located either beckoning wayward club patrons, or doing Tasmanian crash/bounces in marble-orchard rubber rooms.
Recommended: "Santa Carla," "Bloody," "Demonio Nekrofago," "Nekromantikos"
Videos: "Santa Carla" "Bloody"
Saturday, July 12, 2025
The Brains
Crazy Monster vinyl, digital, and compact disc
(Cleopatra)
With Crazy Monster, Canadian, moon-shadowed The Brains - wreckers of stages the world 'round - assume the status of genre masters. Necromancers who are always good for a fresh round. For years, of course, they've clawed toward lofty situation. And with each successive issuance, they've ascended nearer.
Now that Rene de la Muerte and his morbid accomplices have plunged their crimson-smeared marker into that topmost plateau, one anticipates unending cursedness. Oh, happy day.
Recommended: "Evil," "One More Time," "Feel No Pain," "Crazy Monster," "Candy Apple Red," "Darkness," "Shakey Queen," "The Blood is Warm"
Videos: "Evil" "One More Time" "Feel No Pain" "Crazy Monster" "The Blood is Warm"
Plastic Section
Revenge
(Chaputa!)
Up-for-anything wild-siders raised by JDs, hunting kicks and slingshotting down highways first dug by 1950s dervishes. Amps are set to astronomical ranges, ensuring no one misses messages of heedless abandon. Club-crawling revelers are a surging expanse of pomps, quiffs, buzz-cuts, and razored neon explosions. Observers' only options are to leap aboard or dive ditchward.
Recommended: "Insane," "Party Crashers," "Din Daeng," "Breakin' Out," "Revenge," "Frenzy," "Make It Out Alive," "Deuces Wild"
Videos: "Insane" "Revenge" "Deuces Wild"
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