Outdoorsmen on Clown College Records

This Outdoorsmen single came in via Harry at Almost Ready Records, a buddy of his runs Clown College Records and this is the second release for the label. Based out of San Francisco, the Outdoorsmen sleeve shows minimal hand drawn, black and white penned bottle with a leather jacket, driving a car. On the reverse side, the art for "Dead Meat" is that same driving bottle running over a guy in the street reaching for a 100, he's cut in half but still trying to grab that money...I think the message here is, there's a lot of dumb things going on in the world, don't get killed by them.

The A-Side track, "Drunk Driving" starts out with a warble distorted vocal melody that sounds like it's being played back on a messed up tape deck. If you couldn't tell from the sleeve, it's clearly aligned with that stripped down minimal garage punk. The muted guitar chords have their roots in the southern dirty blues, a running train of I wouldn't say this song is celebrating drunk driving, but it doesn't exactly sound against it either. In NYC it's not really an issue, but who are these small towns kidding with their bars in the middle of nowhere off the highway? How is anyone getting home? There's no such thing as a cab? Designated drivers? Right.
The plain guitar distortion here reminds me of Bare Wires, stripped down clean rock electric guitar that lets loose on that chorus, saving the attitude to beat you to the punch with a moment of letting loose in that brief climax, then it's back to the hushed riffs and storyline.

"Dead Meat" however is getting as loud and lovingly obnoxious as Nobunny, or the Hunx, more garage blues, crunchy guitar and everything is pushing the needle (or LED's) pleasantly into the red....and this is all without distortion, just that warm slight reverb fast electric. The distortion is kicked on for a second to push the sound well over the top, but really it's the gritty vocals with attitude at top speed that's selling this. The, Oh yeeeaaaah! is so important, it's not angry or maniacally happy, but working it. It doesn't have to be sold, it's a statement, take it or leave it.
To the point of hardly catching any lyrics, there's hardly a breath taken. There's a lot to deliver and not a lot of time to do it. I can see the microphone stand going down on this one, lots of standing on the monitors, and pacing like an animal.

Classic sounds that I still never get sick of from the genre will never die. Easy to like, hard to reproduce. The Outdoorsmen do a fine job of a well crafted, attention to detail 2 minutes of punk garage.

Get it from Goner Records or try emailing direct Clown College Records at CLOWNCOLLEGERECORDS (AT) YAHOO (DOT) COM