Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The Blind Shake - Get Youth 7" (/260)

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Depression House (2014)

I'm very happy I was paying attention to The Blind Shake lately.  Had I not been, it's very possible this 7" could have slipped through the cracks.  Limited to only 260 copies and put out by a label in Italy, it would have been very easy to miss out on this record.  Luckily, Slovenly Record got a few US distro copies and I was able to grab one and avoid the crazy overseas shipping charges that have become so common in buying records.

If I look at this record, and the band as a whole, analytically there's really no reason I should like them as much as I do.  The Blind Shake is extremely noisy with sneering blown out vocals.  I can't really say there's much in the way of hooks, but what the band has in bucketfuls is crazy energy.  The Blind Shake blows through their songs at a breakneck pace with their foot on the floor.  

"Get Youth" has a repetitious driving guitar riff and a nonstop barrage of drumming.  The yelping vocals shouting "get youth" in the chorus brings the madness together briefly, but then the band goes right back into some more feedback mongering.  

I actually like the B-side "Brickhouse Burro" even more as it has a lot in common with the songs on the band's last full length Key To A False Door. The song is primarily built on a crushingly fast guitar riff that allows the band to just rip through the majority of the song.  But then half way through, everything just drops out and you are left with a slow moment where the song is nothing but single notes are plucked from the guitar.  It's a momentary pause as The Blind Shake immediately pick things back up and tear through the end.

The Blind Shake - "Get Youth":

The Blind Shake - "Brickhouse Burro":


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