Will ‘Bellbottoms’ being on the opening sequence of Baby Driver do for Jon Spencer what Trainspotting did for Iggy Pop? Only time will tell. Does Jon Spencer care? I highly doubt it.
But right now Jon Spencer of Pussy Galore, Boss Hog and of course most famously The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion has chosen to go solo, but this is no acoustic soul searching. Spencer is still going for the jugular with some serious electric boogaloo. Right now we need a down and dirty gutter punk and roll blues, like this record, more than ever. Everything is in the red on this record; the energy levels are set to the maximum and Spencer’s vocals and guitars are WILD.
Opener ‘Do The Trashcan‘ takes literalism to a new level with its dustbin style percussion that ape the Pussy Galore years and comes on like some bastard cousin of The Cramps‘ ‘Garbageman‘.
Spencer calls out all the fake rocks starts on ‘Fake’; ‘your shit is SO fake, you’re look is so boring and your beats are whack, everything is not working baby this is where it’s at’, and those that think what he does is easy on ‘Beetle Boots’; ‘You think it’s easy being in a band? Wrong priorities, misguided intentions, ironic distance just reinforces convention’. It’s a sage warning.
If there is new ground to be broken here there is the electric bass synth grind from Sam Coomes (Heatmister, Elliott Smith, Quasi) that adds an extra almost industrial dimension to the Pussy Galore style sheet metal percussion.
This is a set of taut, fun and concise songs that could go toe to toe with anything Jon Spencer has put his name to; so get down to your local record store and support one of the true rock and rollers in his prime.
