Plastic Gator Machine- Rock n’ Soul Music!

Alex Mitchell, former tattooed thundermaker and head honcho of biker metal messiahs Circus of Power shows up and blows up with a clutch of new songs here. I know, it’s been awhile since the world-at-large heard from this bulletproof poet and arena class bellower, but lemme tell ya, brothers and sisters, the fucker ain’t lost an ounce of his superpowers, or his uniquely blooze-powered macho swagger. “Rock n’ Soul Music” is the result of two super-sessions, in Florida and Texas. Players include…well, in Florida, it was just Alex and a buncha Floridian friends, including Skip from the Throbs and various members of the Eggs and the Psycho Daisies, but things got heavier in Texas when he teamed up with Marc from Circus and Mike Blue from the David Allen Coe band. However, the entire record is so fluid, slipping in and out of genres as the mood and the moon dictates, that you can’t really tell the difference between the two different pick-up bands. Recorded loose, raw, and (mostly) in one take, these might serve as mere demos in the hands of a lesser songwriter, but Mitchell knows how to sell a fuckin’ song so well, that I really can’t see how 24 tracks and a cocaine budget would make much of a difference- the ramshackle imperfections only make the record sound more personal and down-to-Earth. Opener “She’s a Hot Rod” is as twin-v heavy and rough n’ ready as anything on “Vices”, and along with “In the Shadow of Your Love”- a deadringer for a “Magic and Madness” out-take, complete with the obligatory hallucinogenic spoken word section- it’ll have Circus of Power fans off their seats and slamming around the room in motor-rock bliss. There’s all manner of other cool stuff on here too, like the Morrison-esque poetry slam blues of “Letters from the Inside” (lyrical highlight- “then all of a sudden everything changed/ I got search and destroy tattooed on my knuckles and went joyriding with the feel good kids/ we found a passageway in those hills that took us to easy street/ riding there in chrome black drag machine”), a rainy epic of drizzling guitar chords and rambling introspection; a direct contrast to the sunny roots-rock of “Desert Valley Blues”. There’s more hooky, rootsy, Replacements-inspired rockers here to, like the classy “Half a Dozen Roses” and the bittersweet “Stranger in the Market”, which would not seem out of place on “Tim”, between “Kiss me on the Bus” and “Here Comes a Regular”, maybe. It’s not all gas-chugging engine rawk and dusky half-smilers, though, as “RNS” also reveals the country roots that Mitchell couldn’t explore in the leather and chrome confines of Circus. Shit kickers like “Am I Wrong?” and the hardcore honky-tonk of “Whore with a Heart” are way more George Jones than Junkyard, and if it wasn’t for lines like “She moved to Hollywood and lived behind the rock n’ roll Denny’s for a spell/picture of Johnny Thunders on the wall, and a bathroom full of L7 CD’s”, you might never guess this was the work of the main man behind heavy metal’s favorite gang of outlaw bikers. Diverse? Fuck yeah, but what else would you expect from a guy called “Showbiz Al”? I can’t recommend this disc enough- Mitchell is an amazing songwriter, and one of the all time great rock vocalists, and “RNS” wildly flaunts both. If you dig the blooze-metal crunch of Iron Boss, the full-tilt boogie of Raging Slab, the rip-snorting redneck fiesta of the Supersucker-fuck, if you dig rock and roll at all, man, ya gotta search this one out and snap it up. As time rolls on, the probability of a full blown Circus of Power reunion dissolves more and more, but seriously, with discs like this one, you don’t even need a goddamn reunion- the COP spirit is alive, well, and kicking all sorts of ass here. “Rock n Soul Music” is absolutely bad ass, and absolutely essential.