One of the longest running garage rock revival bands, Los Angeles’ Morlocks have been knocking boots with three chords and a cloud of fuzz since 1984. The group’s sixth record, Play Chess refers not the strategy game but the blues label, with the setlist consisting of covers from the catalogs of Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley and other Chess staples. As is the case with so many cracker blues attempts, the Morlocks are most successful when they strain the songs through their own hard rocking personality – Wolf’s “Killing Floor,” Berry’s “Promised Land” and Sonny Boy Williamson*’s “Help Me” (as filtered through the *Who, whose “My Generation” riff opens the song) avoid any imitation whatsoever, more reverent to the originals’ bad-ass spirit rather than the mechanics. When the band tries to play it straight, however, it sounds like every other two-bit bar band with a 12-bar fetish, uninspired at best and almost cartoonish at worst – frontman Leighton Koizumi can sound especially goofy when he tries to push his voice into Muddy Waters territory. But when he and the band do what they do best, i.e. rock their asses off, Play Chess bashes and crashes with more soul than most Nuggets-inspired bands can conjure in a career.
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