Ah-ha! I've got you Brian Warner! Since you've fallen out of the spotlight with your didactic grunge-metal Marilyn Manson shtick, you're gonna try and cash-in on the garage scene. Smart move, Brian. I hear there's big money in that market. You even got a trendy haircut and grew muttonchops for the occasion. But what's with the new name? Bo Barringer? Sounds like some guy on an infomercial selling fold-in-three-steps chin-masters or something. Still, your visionary image manipulation tactics are bewilderingly astute. And garage is the old new old thing, after all.
That said, these vitriolic, gasoline soaked anti-anthems tend to recall too many artists to mention. Why'd you have to toy with the song-structure of Spoon? They already have a more or less perfect thing going and needed no modification in the hands of a misanthropic angst-master such as you. I've got to admit, though that you take the trash can alley rock wankery of bands like Firewater and infuse it with a little more pop accessibility. These are songs that might stick out if they ever found their way to modern rock radio -- but not too much. Because, as much as the garage rock (helmed by the candycane sucking White Stripes) revolution has up and came, there's still a lot of scrunge and nu-metal dominating the airwaves.
So, as commonplace as the sound you hone in on may be (with the exception of the throbbing polka-rock of "Amateur"), it's not so much of a crime that it is wholly disposable. We could use more down and dirty shit and less overproduced, gleaming turd crystals. So thank you, Brian. As you so eloquently put it in Bowling For Columbine, us Americans live in a society of buying and selling fear, and this is some fearsome deadcat blues rock. Just remember that The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion did what you do a thousand-trillion times better, and you'll surely know your place in the punk-garage-blues-rock pantheon.
1. The American Dream
2. Live By Fire, Die By Fire
3. Gasoline Can
4. The One That You Love
5. Trying to Be Nice
6. Amateur
7. Me & the Devil Blues
8. Love Is A Razorblade
9. Right Man On Your Side
10. Die For Your Country
11. Your Gun
More about: The Collisions
