Saturday, October 24, 2009

Left Lane Cruiser All You Can Eat

Left Lane Cruiser
All You Can Eat
purchase album here

Left Lane Cruiser is the real deal. They are blues at its best, filth at its finest, with just two men who are evoking enough inner demons to populate an entire circle of hell. Raising a ruckus, punching throats, and blackening eyes all the way from Ft. Wayne Indiana, Left Lane Cruiser makes a bigger and louder racket than most five-man operations, never once sacrificing songwriting or musicianship for the sake of bombasity.
Their third album, All You Can Eat, released on mighty Alive Records, is a great reality check for 2009; a raw, unabashed boogie and boot-stomp feel where everything sounds better when turned up loud, with a glass full of elixir. Deemed as "punk blues" by many, LLC lays it all out on the table from the word go with this release, with some of the most intense, in-your-face, and aggressive music out there today. With guns ablaze, guitarist/vocalist Frederick "Joe" Evans IV and drummer/noise-maker Brenn "Sausage Paw" Beck roll out of the gate with "Crackalacka" featuring squealing, overdriven slide guitar lines and a stuttered, "train" drum beat. Sending it straight to the bayou, "Ol' Fashioned" finds Evans falling back to his trusty old International resonator guitar with the perfect soundtrack for a hot and sticky, front-porch sittin', sweet tea-drinkin' southern Mississippi evening. Another highlight is "Black Lung" which takes a song that is somewhat reminiscent of the early Black Keys work, adds two tons of smoke, grit, and dirt to the mix, and brings forth a sound that is much thicker and heavier than any material that the Keys ever could imagine.
It's always great to see bands like this still releasing great music in a time such as this when laptops and ironic, hipster haircuts are flooding the mainstream of American music. Make no mistake of it, I doubt that you will ever see these boys in girl jeans and pastels, collaborating with Danger Mouse or Justin Timberlake. I suspect that they will keep getting meaner and nastier every time we see them. Thank God for that! -Andrew Bryant

No comments: