The Blind Shake - Key To A False Door - Yellow Vinyl

The Blind Shake - Key To A False Door - Yellow Vinyl, a photo by Tim PopKid on Flickr.

Castle Face (2013)

While I am very picky about the bands I like, the vast majority of them have a common thread. I like catchy songs with big hooks & choruses and I like some good vocal harmonies. The Blind Shake do not fit in this mold at all. Every once in a while an album comes along that is so good, even if they are outside of my usual musical taste, I can't help but love it. Key To A False Door is one of those albums.

Sure, they do pack in a lot of my other favorite attributes into their songs. In general everything is fast paced, with lots of downstroke heavy riffs, so it's not a total shock I like this as much as I do. But overall this is way noisier than I typically go for. The songs are soaked in fuzz and scratchy production. The vocals are a barely understandable roar, but there is so much energy and enthusiasm crammed into this album it's just addictive.

Key To A False Door is absolutely one of the best records to come out this year and is making a beeline into my top 10.

The Blind Shake - Key To A False Door:
theblindshake1.bandcamp.com/album/key-to-a-false-door