The cover of Catfish Haven's sophomore effort, Devastator, boasts the shadowy image of a leggy woman's high heels in what easily could be insinuated as a compromising position. The image, strange as it might sound, perfectly sums up the mood of Devastator, an album that contains several tracks that would have fit snugly onto the soundtrack for the Patrick Swayze-helmed classic Road House. (And, no, I'm not using the word classic ironically.) It's probable that the boys in the band, particularly lead singer George Hunter, would be pleased by that comparison, particularly because Hunter spent quite a few of his formative years living in a trailer park not too far from Jasper, MO, the tiny town where Road House takes place.
A far cry from the standard indie-cum-emo wave that's swept the underground music world in the past five-to-six years, Chicago-based Catfish Haven sound more like the musically adept love-child of early Motown music and ’70s Brit rockers Foghat, with a dash of garage rockers like The Detroit Cobras thrown in for good measure. Take the album's first single, "Set In Stone," which opens with backup singers Tina M. Howell and Avery Young's "oooh way oooh" and transitions shortly after, via an array of horns to Harrison's grimy, gravelly, garage-rock vocals. The song sounds like it could come straight outta the dirrty dirrty, sharing its love for balls-to-the-wall Americana rock with the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Drive-By Truckers, but the band's big-city leanings are made clear by the punk edginess that infuses both Harrison's wailing lyrical overtures and bandmate Miguel Castillo's backing bass.
Even their slower songs, like "Invitation to Love" and the ballad-esque "Every Day," retain the appealing mix of a Road House rock band that would be at home backing a bar fight and sincere, un-ironic musicians playing out of their mom's garage. It's the endearing uniqueness of this coupling that give Catfish Haven an edge over the plethora of contrived Americana wanna-bes currently littering the musical landscape.
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