Got this one in from Dusty Medical Records from a band I've been slowly running into more and more lately, Red Mass. First they were a part of last years Hozac Hookup Klub series and then I spotted one on Mammoth Cave not long ago and then this one showed up in the mailbox from Dusty Medical...I almost entertained the idea there could be another Red Mass out there, and especially since this one sounded so different from the Klub release I heard, but then everything I'm reading about them talks about a huge rotating ensemble of members they have in this loose collective.
So I wasn't expecting this blasting out dirty garage power punk track....with all these possible members getting their tambourine solos, or backup vocals in there, I was imagining this ending up in a more experimental psych place. Not in the least, it's tight and peaking out all over the red, head banging and raw. Like this "To All the Good People" which has a layer of harsh crunch over broken speakers, and their pop hook compressed into a real smoker, bursting chords, the bass and drum section just trying to keep up with a guitar centric garage rager. All full of that delayed distorted vocal, the band even drops out for a measure while Choyce sings "..to all my good people, No! You'll never gonna catch me alive!" He's sort of relating to 'the people' and then sounding like everyone's against him...that weirdo paranoia is coming across at an all out frantic pace, total rebel's in the school parking lot, you better get the fuck out of here, shit going down with the brickbats and chain spike things.
B-Sides's "The truth about Baby Jane" then applies this distorted collage of '50s garage loose jam to an acoustic handclap melody. This is where a larger group of the members got together to worship and ended up with some form of weird psych-sounding guitar which bursts into the scene during the chorus, a whole different animal. It's great for something more mellow like this to have that power punk to fall back on at a moments notice. There's a high pitch synth screeeeee over the oooo and ahh's, don't try to pin them down man, you're gonna get burned.
Now it's ramshackle vocals, smacking handclaps, warbling out and down vocals, a high reverb twang electric that rises out of this ultra slow phaser sound that eventually is joined by some static fuzz laser busting in on the left side, obliterating this folk campfire feel. This whole thing is slowly going to completely break. The truth about baby jane seems to be that she's about to lose it. Or she went nuts in some kind of drug freak out, or was abducted by aliens. Yep, That's the one.
Wacky old magazine collage art all over this sleeve, on black vinyl from Dusty Medical Records
Check out this sample from their Mammoth Cave single while yer at it:
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