This is apparently the AMERICAN WEREWOLF ACADEMY'S second album and it sounds almost how you'd expect a band with that name to sound. It is a nicely lo-fi and slightly ramshackle beast with creaking floorboards and eerie lighting. Yes they are American too, hailing from Dallas Texas and it may well be that J.R.'s of the Werewolf community.
From the opening clattering, slightly paisley Happy Anniversary, Your Majesty I knew which part of the indie universe I was travelling through and it has that almost, but not quite tight squalling feel in parts that always works pretty well.
I loved the opening to Miserable Living: phased or backwards guitars dissolving into a lo-fi anthem of sorts that made me need to hear it again. Edge Of the Bed also has some really great paisley guitars like the Long Ryders being mangled by Sebadoah and coming out fighting just as the werewolf attacks. Growl!!
Hard Kisses has some great keyboard parts that break through and take the song to somewhere else entirely as the hard kisses rain on down on to the sort of song that would sound fine on late night radio driving through the rain at 3AM. This Thing has some great scary hurricane-type noises just to scare you before you even start to listen to the lyrics.
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Young.Wild.Free sounds like it would be a great live tune with plenty of audience participation before Bad Things - a very slow almost quiet number that sounds like an out-take from Steve Wynn's Sweetness and Light album - proves to be a very cool tune indeed. The album closer, Do You Remember, has some shimmering guitars with its angst-y vocals that work pretty damn well.
This is another cool record on Damnably for any lovers of unashamedly lo-fi monster music.
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