Popping this one in, I honestly think my tape deck is dying. I have other hints suggesting this ailment, but the chipmunky croon of the Dolores Boys' singer can't be on purpose. Can it? Still, the rest of the music is unaffected by mechanical malaise. The grit and filth, scrowling keys and clanging guitars don't seem off-pitch. They do seem so wonderfully wrong, however. Recorded with too much reverb in a warehouse on some humid night, here is a deft collection of lo-fi goth surf. Half the songs are instrumentals, tense sketches of angular punk, dropped and abandoned as the moment of inspiration passes, soundtrack-like incidental pieces, really.
The way the Dolores Boys straddle the nu-Goth and neo-Surf vibes is well done. I'm a fan of the racket, the deep cavernous space they've sculpted their sound from, the tense metallic racket of the guitars. Doomy bass lines and frantic tom-toms evoke some spikey-haired horror in black lipstick and mesh. But the atmosphere of the music isn't some foggy graveyard on a cold autumn night, its hot, claustrophic and urban. Unending daylight, blinding hot sun.
And the song titles kill it for me, "Lead Singer in a Cover Band," "Jesus Gave Up On White Blues Singers" these boys understand the running joke that is rock and roll.
This might be the first full on summer burner of the year.
Peep that shizz: http://www.psychic-mule.com/
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