Got this split dirge of a classic rocker in from Funny / Not Funny Records, home of the Whatever Brains and that Mystic Fortress Sessions Vol. 1 with The Super Vacations and Eternal Summers. F/NF have been one of those great homegrown labels from two friends who love music and want to do their part releasing stuff from their talented friends. I completely understand the feeling and support the hell out of the sentiment behind what these guys are doing...and pretty much everything so far has been really great, including this beefy classic rock split from The Demon Beat and Elephant Child.
The A-Side from The Demon Beat has the catchy title of "Teenage Wasteland"... does this have anything to do with that Who song? Oh absolutely fucking not. Dirty. big beefy chords, I love to hear the grit flying off the strings. The guitar stops for a second? What? There's the bassline. Pounding drums and distortion yelling, with a lot of soul. These guys are channeling southern sludge rock and coming up with a damn dirty groove while doing it... of course really. Fitting in a slice of solo. Like an energetic Black Keys, without being so self aware or make love to you vocals. Next up, "Change the Subject" has those solid guitars mixed as loud as humanly possibly, echo'd and sort of doubled down. Smashing plate vocals, he's got it, but this guitar completely drowns out the whole thing, a big fuck you to the rest of the track here. Is this intentional? Strong as hell groovy complex finger pick part. A squirt of Natural Child with heavier roots. Just as fun lovin' and sweaty with bubble letters playing in the classic rock sandbox. Big melodic solo based somewhat on the previous rhythms. Mute the whole mess towards the end, and they come away with two winners; beefy rifftastic tracks.
Elephant Child then does "Under the Bridge Part 2" ( I think this is following the trend of The Whatever Brains song "Rapper's Delight II). Is it like the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Hell no! As dirty as the flip side, this heavy gated crunch is pushed to the limit. More rooted in a punk pop sound maybe, a Walkmen kind of spaz-folky sound. Heavily separated solo, they have such an effects chain going it's almost dialing into that Fucking Champs nerdtastic sound. Taking it up a notch with big delay and completely shit kicking riffs... nothing but a prog breakfown, all the guitars roam free then come back together in that weird distortion harmony - all the sine waves syncing up. A different song, slow bluesy dirt. The range of gutter electric on this single is fucking groundbreaking. They've gotten sad and go off in that Iron butterfly range of introspective metal. Cathartic release of blues. Dying vocals matching this barely hanging on piercing electric. Letting loose and bursting at the levels, it almost starts to loose steam in the volume dept. probably because they had to dial it back or risk the whole thing running into overdrive at the end of this thing. A massive effort charging all over the place - epic and full of riffs? How can that go together?
Get it from Funny/Not Funny Records
Happy Independence Day.
Nice! I DJ on turntable.fm with Harper from F/NF recs on the reg, good people.
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