The second track “Bo Diddley is a Surfer” for one. It’s all toms and chunky bass with a stripe of sinewy, withering guitar running right down its spine. Here’s a turf these guys have staked out and it sets up proceedings.    

The rollicking “Path of Most Resistance” sounds like a Fugazi song given room to breathe. Art’s too-cool-for-school bass-line underpins the song and Deniz’s guitar-work is his best on the record. Concise and surging, it also hits the target. 

“When The Trouble Comes” is built on the familiar doom-laden chords and a nagging guitar jangle and is the best Tek composition in years. Consider the lyric, delivered in droll Deniz-speak: 

Buy yourself some Bitcoin
Stick it in the cloud
Fill your boot with cans of soup when you drive into town
Get a tank of rainwater
And a pump full of gasoline
But if you got ammunition tou can get anything you need

It’s not so much a call to arms for the backwoods militia-men as an allusion to the deep paranoia that lies within; you just need to add a thousand-yard stare to the kitbag and you’ll be good to go. 

“Death Note” is a wrist-slitter, an intense skin-crawl whose journey into the study to collect its pistol and deal with the situation is led by a clean Tek outro. 

“Shanghai Cab” is a Burroughs-style cut-up. Such things are hit or miss. In this instance, all those non-sequiturs and a plodding accompaniment end up taking it nowhere. The re-make of “Radio Birdman’s “Alone in The End Zone” also seems a bit pointless. The closer, "Truck For Christmas", is the curve-ball, a smooth instrumental that's more at home on a highway than a beach.    

Like Ed Kuepper and the Saints (at least up until recently), Tek has spent his solo career avoiding being accused of re-making Radio Birdman’s sound. The closest he went was the “Outside” album, a dense maze of scorching riffs and spiralling lead guitar. “Fast Freight” isn’t up there with that one but not many are. Time to revisit. 

three3/4

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