Awesome Color - 'Electric Aborigines'
When faced with the press pack for a band's new release, I tend to find myself at a loss of what to make of it. They usually come in one of two flavours; either 1) a collection of sound-bites from previous reviews and a tour list, or 2) a couple of paragraphs of what is often pretentious, stream-of-consciousness babble about influences, visions and beauty. Fortunately, Awesome Color's energetic maelstrom of guitar-based noise, sweaty southern rock, and post-punk immediacy more than makes up for such promotional flimflammery as "rainbow amalgams" and descriptions of "inspired citizens of a small modernist nation of musical, visual, and literary outrage".
Channeling the furious spirit of the Stooges and fellow Michiganders (thank you, Wikipedia), the MC5, their second long-player of hard garage-rock, 'Electric Aborigines', is the sound of a band really cutting loose. The pummeling drums of Allison Awesome (née Busch) and taut, wiry, almost metronomic bass of Michael Awesome (né Troutman) provide the perfect backdrop for Awesome Derek (Stanton)'s guitar-play, which veers from rhythmic power-chords into loose, meandering, screaming solos. On 'Outside Tonight', they even manage to evoke the feeling of a southern honky-tonk, albeit without the rattling piano or the bar-room brawl afterwards.
The opening track, 'Eyes Of Light", is pretty straightforward in terms of structure despite lacking anything that could be termed 'chorus', 'break' or 'verse'; backed by a rolling bass riff, submerged by gallons of feedback and Allison's crashing cymbals, Derek proceeds to unleash a fret-burning, grungy assault on the ears that doesn't rest for the full five minutes and forty-five seconds. Having listened to it a couple of times, I found myself having to change my shirt. The whole album maintains this pace; it must have been exhausting to play, because it certainly is to listen to. 'The Moon', with its 'math-rock' changes in tempo, descends in a cacophony of swirling guitar, fuzzy feedback and pounding drums, and the rollicking, energetic rocker, 'Burning' are two stand-out tracks.
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Lyrically (and most disappointingly), the songs are nothing new. 'Step Up' is the usual encouragement to get off your arse and win the girl, and 'Burning' pulls out the usual stuff about devils, Detroit and "burning it all down", but the sneering attitude and the pure energy mean that the listener barely has enough time to listen to the often snarled lyrics, anyway. Variety is also not really one of the band's strong-points (although an organ does make an appearance in 'Come And Dance'), but who needs variety when you've got the audio equivalent of a punch to the face? And by the end of 'Evil Rose', after nearly forty-five minutes of brash, often over-powering noise, a lie down will probably be in order for most listeners. For those who want a new album of old-school rock that wears its influences on its sodden, sweat-drenched sleeve, then look no further.
http://awesomecolor.net/
http://www.myspace.com/awesomecolor
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