ROUND-UP: SLEAZE
Quintron + Miss Pussycat Goblin Alert GONER
This New Orleans duo are part weirdo garage-rock ensemble, part performance-art spectacle, and their music is just as outthere. Essentially it’s like The Cramps if they were deranged, foul-mouthed kiddie show hosts, and although you can’t actually see them sauntering around in paper-mache lobster outfits or manipulating bug-eyed marionettes you can certainly imagine it all happening.
Q and Pussycat are too prolific to even keep up with - a guess is that they’ve made at least eleventeen albums – but this highly accessible collection of insanity is the perfect place to jump in.
Opening with the hilarious and
Quintron + Miss Pussycat: a fun and wholesome rock’n’roll riot. supernaturally catchy Teenagers Don’t Know Shit (‘they’ll fuck up your house and they cannot fix a car), a cowbellbanging, organ-drenched 70s riff-rock pastiche, the album offers up everything from jumpy synth-punk to sarcasm-smothered power-balladry. This is one of the most fun - and oddly wholesome - rock’n’roll riots you’ll stumble across all year.
The Sweat Maximum Saturation SELF-RELEASED HTTPS://THESWEAT1.BANDCAMP.COM/
Befitting their name, this London mob play gritty, no-frills, looselimbed rock’n‘roll. Taking their cues from early-70s Stones and late-70s pub rock, they can belt out straight-ahead garage rock crunchers with easy grace, but they really shine on full-blown 70s arena rockers like Yes I Like It. Which I do.
Mad Dogs We Are Ready to Testify GO DOWN
The title suggests an allegiance to Detroit rock city insurgents like the MC5, and that is certainly on tap here. Third album from these Italian stallions delivers high-flying revolution rock somewhere between their proto-punk heroes and the Scandinavian hordes that copped their action two decades later. It’s a jammer, through and through.
The Northern Rockets Self-titled KAFADAN KONTAK
Extremely self-assured Spanish riff-rock with all the swaggering, chest-thumping confidence of the ’72era Alice Cooper band. And while the Rockets are clearly inspired by the golden gods of yore, this is no retread of past glories. It’s fresh, hooky and rocks like crazy. If there are any arenas left in five years, the Rockets will be playing one.
The Savage Kind Love Songs for Bastards MURDER COW
Catchy, snotty garagepop from these St Louis house wreckers. With a sound that spans everything from mid-60s big beat to snarling 70s punk, Savage Kind’s one and only mission is to fling sweat and shake some action. Highlights include jittery pogo-punk, gritty, infectious power-pop and Ramones-y garage punk.