Chuck Berry had "My Ding-a-Ling", AC/DC had "Big Balls", King Missile had "Detachable Penis"; perhaps, for the song title "Tastebuds", we should thank King Khan and Mark "BBQ" Sultan for their discretion. The tune, the seventh track on the shuffly garage-rockers' third LP together, is a disarmer no matter your take on it; without ruining the surprise, the tastebuds in question are attached all over the nether quarters, allowing for some heretofore unknown pleasures. It's not half as funny as Khan and Sultan think it is, but it is precisely as catchy as they think it is. If their goal was to get me to walk around my apartment describing the new sensations in my bathing-suit area, well, mission accomplished, gents.
Both Khan and Sultan are as good as anybody at brushing 40-odd years of dust off old Nuggets tropes; since their last meeting on wax, 2006's What's For Dinner?, Khan and his Shrines and Sultan by his lonesome have each crafted one heck of a snarling platter of 1960s-indebted rock'n'roll. But there was also the recent debacle from the Almighty Defenders, an "evil gospel" supergroup featuring Khan, Sultan, and the Black Lips that boasted of its quick conception while failing to address how slapdash the end product felt. It's easy to see why they were confident in pulling that off: Khan's a stupendously stylish vocalist, able to ape everybody from the Big Bopper to Otis Redding without losing a move, and Sultan's got some ear for compact arrangements and clever melodic interjections. There's a swagger here borne out of totally earned confidence; these dudes are good, and they know it. But confidence can take on ugly forms from time to time, and it does get a little grisly on Invisible Girl; sometimes you feel like these guys were just a bit too cocky in their abilities to finish writing the damn song.
It's easy to become taken in by opener "Anala", what with Khan's ooh-mow-mows and Sultan's surprisingly sweet croon. The somewhat curious but nevertheless successful title track comes next; eschewing the chug'n'thwomp for which they're both noted in favor of a straightahead shimmer that suggests both the Byrds and the La's, it's a lovingly crafted tune and perhaps a hint at a new direction, only slightly out of step with the other material here. From there, it's throwback time, as Khan and Sultan navigate the divide between Little Anthony and the Seeds. Throughout, it's Sultan's voice that stands out-- particularly on the slow-burning, "Still of the Night"-like "Third Ave."-- among everything, sweet and shape-shifting next to Khan's gruntier style. The Sultan-led tunes tend to be less aggressive than Khan's, which is odd; not for Sultan, who handles himself admirably as a singer and player throughout Invisible Girl, but for Khan, whose does best when he's got a little more space to work with. Among the sharp shocks of "Truth or Dare" or "Lonely Boy", he sounds perfunctory, rushed.
Something you might say about even the best stuff on Invisible Girl. Khan and Sultan move between the trappings of doo-wop to skid rock so fitfully it's easy to miss that some of these tunes aren't all there lyrically. Once the guffaws stop, it can get a little predictable. Songs like "Spin the Bottle" and "I'll Be Loving You" are indebted to a period in music that was by and large not its most fertile poetically, but for all their musical formalism, they're obviously irreverent cats-- remember "Tastebuds"? It's just too bad, for every "Animal Party" or ill-fated game of "Spin the Bottle" and well-placed anatomical joke there's one too many tunes that just go through the motions, and old ones at that. Still, the tunes on Invisible Girl work, because Khan and Sultan's love of the music they're ripping off is obvious and infectious, and because they've got a knack for capturing the feel of the records they're taking cues from most throwbacks can't quite muster. Sam the Sham would be proud; that is, if he's cool with dick jokes.
