Magic Jake & the Power Crystals - Friday - Gates of Columbus Lounge

Debut album on Burger Records


The Power Crystals charge forth, freshly lightning-struck into a new, gangly life, slid off from the slab in the garage, now, a strangely enchanting lo-fi-grooving, shredded-to-hell bubblegum pop Frankenstein.

Its bloodstream equally addled by caffeine and nicotine and coursing with a fuzzed and fibrous rock n roll flush, its gaunt, metallic body scrapes its way exuberantly through a skateboarding album of 2-minute ravenous pounders.

Roaring, squalling solos, steady trucking bass ripples and distortion-blustered vocals that balance a keyed-up cadence with a melodious belt; there's light flares of strutting glam-rock, blues wringing, cathartic punk huffing tromps and relentless...relentlessly shakeable rhythms.

There are no slow songs.

It definitely retains the harried, nigh-slapdash manner in which it was created - (pure in-the-basement spontaneity recorded within a week's time). So, yes, it's frayed at the edges with lo fi fog, but these rhythms and melodies are nevertheless instantaneous, blended with an air of reckless kartwheel exertion.
--This project brings together members of The Go, the Detroit Cobras, Magic Shop, the Readies, Electric Fire Babies, Isles of ESP, Conspiracy of Owls and Hi-Speed Dubbing. They've got an album out on California-based cassette mavens Burger! --

A run around the town after dark kind of album; where you align your crystals and conjure open the doorways to freakier flipsides, away from the sun with no sign of slowing down...

Basement-tinged ballyhoo, to be sure, but with its own profoundness and beauty subtly sutured throughout the frayed denim... Peer through the smoke, embrace the trouncing rhythm, scream along with the guitar...

...that kind of album.
11 pm friday -gates of columbus - part of Metro Times Blowout XIV
more info