I’ve been waiting for a get-down-and-dirty rock ‘n’ roll album for a while-one that makes me want to dance, make out, and fight all at once. I should’ve known that it would come from Boss Hog’s Cristina Martinez and Jon Spencer, along with Dutch badass Solex (aka Elisabeth Esselink) as impetus, inspiration, and added awesome.
Most of today’s music has left the swagger on the barroom floor, but these three picked it up, smacked it into shape, and pulled together a record with a little bit of everything you love best. It’s got that throbbing Blues Explosion groove, Spencer’s growl and wail, Martinez’s snarl, and Solex’s almost-sweet voice and pure sonic magic layered with cinematic samples for good measure. With tracks compiled in Esselink’s Amsterdam apartment/record store and passed back and forth across the Atlantic to New York for Martinez’s and Spencer’s tweaks and contributions, this just-plain-sexy mix wipes the floor with the sensitively scruffy indie darlings of today.
