Mooney Suzuki's Electric Sweat
Rock 'n' roll lives for at least one more day in the form of New York's Mooney Suzuki, a declasse bunch of musicians who look like Billy Hopeless of the Black Halos dresses them. They look like a band made up of Thurston Moore or Brian Jones, Lenny Kaye or Pete Zaremba, David Johansen or Mike Clarke of the Byrds, and either Alan Licht or Lee Ranaldo. It's a style we've seen before, in other words, but it's interesting to note as the pages of history continue to turn how much all the different eras of rock are now being compressed into a single stylistic entity. While there seemed to be great distance between, say, the 60s and the 80s when they were actually happening, since then one can kinda see the continuum from, say, Cream to Black Flag. My theory is that ever since disco, rock has represented a kind of cultist thing no matter how you slice it?because once it became self-evident that there were clearly rewards for just playing it slick (hence the predominance of inhuman forms like hiphop ever since), the pursuit of rock 'n' roll became purely an artistic decision. This meant rock lost some of its vitality, but it also liberated it in a way, because now, with so few rewards for playing it, the only reason someone would even bother to do it was for the sake of the thing itself. Which is why, in many ways, this is the greatest renaissance of rock ever: Nashville Pussy, Guitar Wolf, the Figgs, the Richmond Sluts, Black Halos, Nebula, White Stripes, Loud Family, Brian Jonestown Massacre, etc.
The Mooney Suzuki joins that list. This album is an absolutely combustible experience, in the tradition of such greats as Blue Cheer or the MC5. This is my point about some of these new bands being the greatest ever?because they have the privilege of hindsight, they're actually better than Blue Cheer or the MC5, and here's why: those bands were kind of dumb (it was the 60s after all). The Mooney Suzuki has the privilege of extracting the valuable contributions of these bands to the body of rock, while carving away some of the excess bullshit like the postmodern sculptors that they are.
A perfect example is the organic-sounding "Natural Fact," which cops the grim-sounding motorwhack of gothic mid-60s grunge barons like the Music Machine and Iron Butterfly but with a more accelerated punk rock drive. This song has fuzzed-out guitar and lyrics like "mother nature leave me be"?it's clearly 60s-influenced but doesn't sound hokey because the Mooney Suzuki has taken the best of those traits and hyped them up to the point of rock superiority (the way you wished Blue Cheer sounded).
And that's what Electric Sweat is like?basically a case of spot-the-influence, but?and this is the important thing?like the Jonestown Massacre, you believe these guys are sincere about their affectations. "The Broken Heart" is a token blues tune, just like they used to do back in the late 60s, and it sounds just like the Animals. You don't hear things like this much anymore, but maybe guys like this and Jack White are a step back in the right direction.
Anyway, it hardly matters?ain't never gonna triumph over Britney nowadays. If you dig rock 'n' roll, take it where you can get it, and why question it? What Mooney Suzuki has done is create a classic rock 'n' roll album. It's no bullshit, it's the rock 'n' roll revival, and this is the best Detroit album by non-Detroiters since Gluecifer.