What a strange sound. What a wonderful experience. Now, I know that today’s music fan likes things pigeon-holed, packaged, labelled, and tied up with a neat bow, but the best music rarely lends itself to such easy definition. Okay, if you insist, I’ll give it a go. Imagine if Captain Beefheart had borrowed Stevie Wonder’s 70’s backing band and was writing the score for the funky-psychedelic equivalent of the hit musical Cats….ironically enough called Dogs!
See, it isn’t easy, but that works for now, at least until you give it a spin for yourself and make your own mind up. Psycho-groovey guitars squelch and squall, beats crash out a rock and roll ritual, exhausted trumpets bleat out a deflating fanfare for the uncommon music man, and above it all, Bad Boy Butch Batson spits out the blues. It’s menacing, off-kilter, humorous, hard as nails and strangely beguiling – garage rock with a surf twang, roadhouse blues meets doghouse grooves…or something, I don’t know, I’m just winging it at this point.
And then, in two minutes, it’s all gone. Short, sharp and shockingly effective. Or effectively shocking, one or the other.
Taken from his album Brute Force, it is the sound of Batson slipping back into a sonic persona he first inhabited decades ago, and given the comfortable, uninspiring state of modern music, I think his re-embrace of this musical maverick persona couldn’t come a moment too soon.
Website
Facebook
Spotify
Bandcamp
Youtube
