This is an album awash with snarling, fuzzy guitars that sting sweaty skin like summer dragonflies and leak their business all over the place. The vocals are shout-sung in Spanglish to a tattoo of primal tub thumping. It’s self-described as the Stooges convening in a tequila bar - and that’ll do me.
They came out of nowhere, got cold feet and went back there again but Eddy Current Supression Ring still casts a shadow over Melbourne’s bustling garage rock scene. Mesa Cosa mines the same rich vein of suburban humdrum for their lyrical themes, but it’s in the direction of Spanish madmen Wau Y Los Arrghs!!! that they most frequently nod their musical hat.
Vocalist Pablo Alvarado is from Mexico and doesn’t mind you knowing. He rips into his work like a Tijuana gang lord with a disembowelling knife who’s getting square with Donald Trump. The approach often crosses over into mania. Mucho recommend. Or something like that.
A call-out to no frills/no fills drummer Knives who drives the bus relentlessly. He lays the foundation for these songs with brutal effectiveness and there’s a thrilling mess of guitars and bass thrown over the top like a big Mexican blanket.
“Sydney” is a modern-day cousin of the pallid “Don’t Go To Sydney” by The Zimmermen but a shared sentiment is where the similarity ends. The skulking bass intro just sets the scene. Mesa Cosa’s reasons for not heading north are because “the girls of (insert Melbourne suburb name here) will miss me”. Boring old Paul Kelly might have a hankering for the view from a 727 but most of us from this neck of the woods know that the vista from the gutter outside the Hoey (R.I.P.) was always more interesting.
Closing song “Bad Blood” is the aural equivalent of a head-crushing manflu. “Bruja” ups the distortion to frenzied levels and an ascending piano part is a nice Stoogey touch as the guitarists climb up their fret boards. “YaYaYa” is positively pop by comparison. “Satanas” cops The Sweet for good measure but leaves “Ballroom Blitz” behind at the altar.
If Mesa Cosa was a Stooges song it would be “Loose” and that’s perfectly fine when it involves energy at these levels. “YaYa Brouha” only has nine songs and that’s cool, too. It’s an aural pummelling that’s going on here with no intervention by the referee, and its brevity is a reminder that you don’t need more than a few rounds when all the punches land.
