CD Review - The Love Drunks

The garage bon vivants and primal rock and roll connie sewers are all talking smack about Atlanta, GA's The Love Drunks. It's good smack talk lending credence to the theory that there is life after crunk in the city that Sherman used to light his cigars on his way to spring break weekend on the Georgia Atlantic coast. Alive Records has just issued a self titled platter by The Love Drunks and it's being used for than just target practice at my local shooting gallery. The mix of The Love Drunks's tuneage and pistol shooting is a perfect marriage of form, function, and sound.

Especially when you consider that vocalist Patrick A. often sounds like he's been shot by a small caliber weapon. Small caliber only because he never comes completely unglued or unbridled (pardon the metaphor but there's a glue factory right down the street...sniff). The album lacks that little extra oomph that comes out during a live show by The Love Drunks. But it comes damn close Mr. and Mrs. Rockabilly blues country garage punk rock fans. Because at base The Love Drunks are your basic three chord louts with a fine lyrical parade of lowlife and anti-hero pop cult references with titles like "Lindbergh Baby", "Riot In Haymarket Square", "Women And Livin' (Dirty Bits)", and "Mortician Blues" that should hip you to the Lux Interior motives of such fine young lads.

A friend of mine used to live in Atlanta some years ago and said the town was filled with rockabilly pompadour grease grooming sleazeballs and sleazebags (what is the difference between a sleazeball and a sleazebag?) and that they only liked to come out at night. They'd look normal during the day, but if there was anything happening with even a tangential relationship to Fifties rockabilly they'd retreat to their batcaves at the end of the working day and transform themselves, with the help of whatever Alfred was on hand, into Hasil Adkins worshipping freaks and walk among the norms. I wonder if a similar phenomenon will manifest itself in Nashville on February 16th when The Love Drunks bring their brand of rock and roll retro-viral thud to The Basement that night.

The Love Drunks have plunged right into that needle hole knitting one and pearling two of the great rock and roll tapestry and whether they eventually make a big weave out of that piece of fabric or not they make music that's fun to weave to whether you be sixty or seventy and craving some Fifties flashbacks or a modern day punk out to bring anarchy to the world while drivning your momma's Lexus. Listen to "Revenge" and make up your own mind. I'm late for my telepathy class.