THE AMUSIACS - REVIEWS

Band of the Day - www.louderthanwar.com
May 2012

With a début gig at London's Lexington with Gallon Drunk last month and another under their belt at the same with Dan Sartain, proving genius is collaboration, The Amusiacs herald an overdue and welcome return for Jon and Meaghan Free (Gin Palace) teamed up with garden of England rockers, Jooks of Kent guitarist Tim Ray Rogers and drummer Scarlett Rickard.

Harking back to the mid '90s Gallon Drunk/Jon Spencer era sound of blues-punk legends Penthouse – a name not to be taken lightly – and a long distance fold-the-page, you-draw-the-next-body-part project by account; the awkward, amusing, irreverence of this approach has reaped natural and serious results on this eponymous 14 track CD.

The sum equals more than the parts on a hard-to-define but tightly honed sonic stab at the NY scene's art sarcast, Krautrock's relentless punktummer, drone-rock's self importrance. But – crucially – defaulting to hooky riffs, tuned electro-feedback and strung out treble reminiscent of processed brass, when lazy comparisons tempt. Fat chords, wire thin lines, spjazzed out spins, spool over Scarlett's cemented drone-disco drums, with Free (Mr) providing stripped down low end fizz – stuttering back sonic wise-cracks at his foil's fuzz-aplenty chafing.

Lyrically, Meaghan's petulant snarl coloured by Tim's bluesy drawl, a co-crooned harsh-worded and newly found partnership in focused, sardonic, hatred. When denser sonic comfort beckons towards the end, out come the home-made tin resonator guitars to skim the surface and open up space between the two voices, in a delta style, but with a mudslide on the levee. Anyone who relishes the tradition of throw-the-Frankenstein-switch, inject-new-life-into-the-stone-washed-corpse-of-12-bar, blues, will fucking love this.

Pete Bennett, May 2012

note to editor:
sarcast, punktummer, importrance and spjazzed are all supposed to be spelled like that