Before there was Iggy, there was Jim. In the much recounted story, Iggy was still a jazz nerd when he saw the Doors play at Michigan State's homecoming weekend dance. Morrison, drunk and angry, berated the thicknecks while pouring his loudest, most annoying caterwauls over the din of his backing band. Unfortunately, Iggy's Stooges didn't have the chops to cut their blues so mean, instead turning to the frantic diatribes of nonsense and noise that would become punk.
That early flirting with sensuality, Freud, and slightly hokey (if atmospheric) leanings towards magic still resonates across America, though it isn't so popular in the underground. The music, like Morrison in his last days, is commonly referred to as "bloated." It is therefore with some grace that Black Cat Music summon the bravado, free-associative linguistics, and raw confidence of the Doors. Granted, this is just one of many Doors references made in a sea of post-Doors reviews, but it's among the most overt with the shimmery, back-door blues pouring so effortlessly from these guys' hands. From Berkeley, Black Cat Music includes members of the Criminals and the Receivers, and here, they reclaim the long-forgotten glam overtones first defined in Kim Fowley's version of west coast punk.
From the first moment Travis Dutton's guitar brands the songs as gin-fueled, metallic based grit, there's no pauncy apologies or ironic doublespeak-- just curl-ended phrases of instruments and vocals working at first in opposition, then in chorus.
Songs like "The Chain-Snatcher" borrow from the Gun Club's proto-hair pompousness in a way no east coast band ever could. "Most Perfect Day, Ever" undercuts this with an acoustic rhythm track and subtle, double-tracked background vocals indicative not so much of radio production as that of a precise studio mind. Still, the Svenonius-like swagger of singer Brady (no last name) takes on earnest, sometimes cliched sentimental properties without a hint of that disaffection so obvious in Nation of Ulysses or any of the new breed of political post-punkers. It's as if Black Cat Music, projecting the sonic nihilism of their ancestors, can't help but wake to the sunshine and expect it all to come out alright.
Black Cat Music's genuflection at the glam-gone-metal mindset, coupled with Brady's husky vocals, also manages to make room for lovely moments like "The Dirty Penny," a song whose dark, Spanish turns recall Eric Burdon's Animals while standing firmly in the timeless world of slammin' solos and slick studios. That said, this isn't progress so much as a re-envisioning of history-- one where Morrison never sizzled out, where Iggy's gutter antics still smacked of glitter, and where the politics of the Threat and the Flag were just so much white kid, middle-class jive.
