Alternative title: "He Gets by With Some Help From His Friends".

Producer-guitarist Bruce "Cub" Callaway assembled a stellar cast for this, his 2013 return to recording after a lay-off, and it shows.

John Hoey (Died Pretty), Warwick Gilbert (Radio Birdman), Paul Larsen (Celibate Rifles), Clyde Bramley (Hoodoo Gurus) and Julie Mostyn Gilbert (Flaming Hands) all played roles. Lesser-knowns Ian Johnson, Louis Callaway and Harry Rothenfluh also contributed drums.

No introduction needed for the onetime spiritual leader of the MC5 so here’s a personal note about meeting John Sinclair:

It was on a night off during a business trip that involved a flying visit to Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 2000s. Sinclair was in town for that city’s annual Hash Bash and had just played a show at The Blind Pig. I’d been drinking at the Eight Bar Saloon with some locals, including Scott Morgan who did the introduction.

Do you still believe in record labels? Back in the ‘80s, being released on an imprint that you knew and loved (Bomp, Citadel, Waterfront) was a surefire indication that a band possessed a “certain” sound, and was good.

Screaming Apple is the garage rock label in Germany that doesn’t release duds, so hearing about it collaborating with Australia's Off The Hip for an album by a band called The Smart Patrol was always going to be news falling on receptive ears. 

It’s a truism that many bands from Europe rock but don’t rock and roll. It’s not their fault, of course, it’s just a matter of cultural conditioning. Rock and roll is not their first musical language and the “high art” the place is steeped in suffocates that "low art", like any other form of musical expression, into submission.

So when you find a Continental band that “gets it”, you better latch on to them, tight. 

Some of us are (ahem) old enough to remember a French band called Fixed Uo, who were on Sydney’s Citadel label, and made it to Australia to play and record in the mid 1980s. Rob Younger and Jim Dickson produced an album for them. Soulful garage rock was their stock in trade. They “got it”. 

Pigeons don’t belong in holes.

In other words, just as soon as you peg Off The Hip as Australia’s home for “Thee Garage Rock Sound” exclusively, they throw another curve ball like this here Brown Spirits CD.

Brown Spirits are from Melbourne and are an instrumental trio made-up of Tim Wold, Agostino Soldati and Andre Fazio, whose collective curriculum vitae includes bands like Mod Vigil, Kids of Zoo, Deep Street Soul, Russian Roulettes, Go-Set and Legends of Motorsport.

To the best of my knowledge (and I’ve heard most of them), Brown Spirits sound nothing like any of the above.

Bleak, industrial blues. That’s what you’ll immerse yourself in on this six-track EP. It’s one part Suicide, one part Delta blues, and fuck any compact with the Devil - if that was a soul left behind at the negotiating table in return for a bus ticket to the crossroads, it sounds like it’s being picked over by vultures.  

Written on the road and recorded with minimal affectations, it’s a collaboration between Anglo-Italo blues rocker Stiv Cantarelli and studio collaborator Roberto Villa. And a drum machine.