Trashcan Sunrise – Thee Windom Earles (Earlesworld)
The packet says: “Trash Garage. Sleaze Surf. Greasy Rockabilly” and sure ‘nuff it ain’t no lie.
Two guitars, drums and bass and keys; it’s not a departure from the familiar for veteran garage freaks, but Thee Windom Earles do it so damn well and with a shitload of energy. This is a band that has obviously earned its “Thee” in a myriad of parties, pubs, dungeons and booze-soaked boltholes.
Four men and a woman, these throwbacks hail from Salford in England’s north which, in my admittedly limited experience, is as good as anywhere in the UK to escape from in the drudgery that is a Pommy winter. If you’re going to ride the narrow backstreets of Greater Manchester, you might as well do it with a headful of something mind-altering in a hot-rod, showing a bit of style.
Swirling keyboards and fuzztone make a heady cocktail at the worst of times and “Trashcan Sunrise” is a fool-proof brew. There are 10 tracks with none of them a piece of filler.
Opener “Monster Safari” (an instrumental except for the odd shriek) sounds like a war broke out between Dick Dale and the The Munsters over the back fence at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Reverb and fuzztone at 20 paces.
The simplistic “Bubblegum” flicks the switch to music of that very category and will stick to your inner ear like baby shit to a blanket. “Playing Dead” is its close relative with a slightly cheesier edge thanks to those keys.
“Nudie Magazine” makes to pluck itself clean and then rolls around in a pool of that fuzz muck. “Billy Meat” is as distorted as you can be when you’re teetering on the edge of a precipice of pure noise trying to still sound musical. It puts me in mind of Australia’s champions of the art of six-string trash, The Crusaders. Everyone will have their own local reference point.
“Spacetits” sounds like a Pentacostal Captain Beefheart talking in tongues while his backing bands slips into noise experimentation. The more straight-forward “Savage Skulls” sounds like it swallowed a theremin.
Of course you can try before you buy on Bandcamp, and it comes in all formats.
1/2
