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THE SURGENS
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As on the
equally excellent ‘Lodge Recordings’, there’s a splash of crazy ass
country chooglin’ - ‘Death Of A Politician’ - that makes
gravy spontaneously erupt down your chin over your Sunday suit. But if you
imagine this is some comedic pastiche, sip on the sweetly haunting Dias De
Los Muertos sorrowful cowboy swoon of ‘Drunken Angel’ with
its splendidly languid fevered barrio riot chorus and ride the epic
Caligula sized genetically gonzoid backwoods genome gangbang that is ‘Hank
and the Blue Legged Dog’, the strangest lament you’ll ever hear,
like the house band on that Mississippi steamer drinking on the Devils
tab. Without castration by categorisation it’s like our very own Legendary
Shack*Shakers, and they deserve to be signed, sealed and, yuss, stitched
up with surgical precision. |
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-Stu Gibson |
The
second CD I’ve received of these chaps showeth The Surgens
stitching things up good and proper, forsooth and for fucks sake! Recorded
at London’s Gizzard studios this sounds so gritty it seems our surgical
shamans brought all the mojo from the aeons to the sessions - stomping
boot-heel bacchanalia from Old West saloons, teeth from a thousand town
centre tournees and bones from old blues heroes - to help ‘em summon up
then spit out grit n’ gravel encrusted, scabrous, scalpel lacerating
voodoo vignettes churning on Rio Grande guitar swill, tobacco spittin’
lasso-artist sardonic slide, clanking like Knights Templar in full charge
centred by liquid loose vocals like Pere Ubu’s David Thomas wearing a
cowboy hat from a thrift store that someone found in an old 50’s
Cadillac...was some country singers or other. ‘John Hardy’ is a Nick Cave
salty soul suit splitter, rampant testifying raking over the coals of
hell, fervent grave-gaunt gospel pillage, a page torn from an old songbook
that died with Leadbelly. This opener is merely a taster of their
bellicose, bibulous and bilious blues. When ‘Twisted Brain’
(recently played on Jonathan Ross’ Radio Two show, no less!) kicks in it’s
almost eviscerating, dragging you down into the swirling depths of all
those dark places with the force of a sinking Mississippi steamer.