Left Lane Cruiser's Junkyard Speedball is grimy, grungy, dirty and nasty. It's full of reverb, vocal effects and organs. In some parts, it even sounds like White Zombie showed up at some southern dive, drunk on Jack Daniels. So why should the average Farce the Music fan have any interest in a band that sounds like this?
Well, those things are actually plusses in my book, but Left Lane Cruiser also provides lots of bluesy, country-tinged goodness in their songwriting. Sometimes you have to listen closely through the haze of fuzzed out guitar and echoey vocals, but it's there. Lots of slide guitar, plenty of rural subject matter, countryside grit and grime. These guys rock, to put it in a cliché neater and nicer than anything you'll hear on this album.
The sliding tones of "Circus" will get you tapping your foot and craving a hard shot of something. "Shine" will make you feel like you showed up at the wrong bar, one with a band behind chicken wire playing dirty blues as you dodge bottles and attempt to find a seat near the least scary looking bunch to enjoy the tunes.
"Weed Vodka" gets you stoned on both with Brenn Beck's relentless drum beat and and a blues riff the devil himself piped straight into guitarist Joe Evans' fingertips. "Shredding" isn't the term for this style of playing… it's more like "grating"… as in grating cheese, not grating as in "annoying."
"Cracker Barrel" is a bucket thumping number full of more grade-A filth. It's a lot more "barrel of crack" than it is the well-known chain restaurant found at your nearest Interstate exit.
This is stepping in cow shit and liking it; it's fist fighting in a mud puddle with your best friend after a six pack, while a hottie waits at the side to give her lovin' to the soiled victor. I don't know any better way to describe it.
Grab you some Junkyard Speedball and get nasty.
Ninebullets.net has some free tracks and a review here.
For my 50th nugget of wisdom, I'm gonna get as real as it gets with you, my peeps. If you're not writing with, as Snoop dee-oh-double-gee says, "my mind on my money and my money on my mind," you might as well crap in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up first. There's a process to this craft, a formula if you will. I don't sit down with pen and guitar in hand and think "Where will my feelings lead me today?" Hell naw, I think "What's in it for me?" The day I start worrying about the art of songwriting is the day I slice off my testicles with a dull letter opener and start collecting Hummel figurines. You think I write this junk because I enjoy it? Nah, homie, I write it because it stocks the bar with Goose. Peace y'all.
Dirty Hippy
Hipster
Hedonic Inverted Centaur
