Often I talk about a record sounding filthy. Some bands just have a way of sounding greasier than a box of four-day-old KFC.
Left Lane Cruiser have been doing this shit long enough to see that and raise you: the first verse of “Motown Mash” ain’t even done and Freddy J IV is offering to “sit you right down on my face”.
We’ll respectfully decline the kind offer, but they aren’t done. “Big Momma Shake” shakes everything it has. My god. Its groove is not even primal. It’s off on a quest for fire.
The finest, nastiest two-piece in the world, are in fine form on “Bayport BBQ Blues”. Boiling everything down to the damn roots, with “Man Down The Road” an absolute maelstrom of slide guitar, and even when the acoustics come out for “Crazy Love” you imagine that if you looked at it the wrong way, you’d be eating through a straw for weeks. For clarity, Freddy’s lady scalps him here. Hallmark take note, yeah?
Yet the band – Brenn “Sausage Paw” Beck on drums is the other half of this tandem of noise.- are fantastic.
“Black Forest Blues” is blues so nasty that Satan has sold their soul on the Dark Web, “River Picker” is funky, and “Turkey Vulture” (which was one of the taster tracks) is so catchy they probably vaccinate for it.
“Get Down” slows the pace a little. Almost a ballad, it’s tender if you actually listen to it, it’s just that Left Lane Cruiser can’t sound tender.
J IV is a brilliant player and you imagine their live gigs are a riot, and a near hoedown emerges in “Backyard”. Playing this on stage, sweat running down the walls is what LLC are about and you can almost sense Paw’s kit begging for mercy.
“The Desert” is another from the slower end. It broods, it seethes. “Ain’t no easy way around it”, goes the hook “when my backs against the wall”. They’d probably come out fighting.
There’s a bonus track on the CD. “Ophelia” adds a bar room piano of the sound not heard since the prohibition era. The juke joint suits them too.
Left Lane Cruiser don’t make bad records. They are the epitome of what’s forever wonderful about two-piece bands, they are just ever so slightly unhinged.
I wouldn’t eat anything they’d cooked at the BBQ but it’s so tasty nonetheless.
Rating 9/10
REVIEW: LEFT LANE CRUISER – BAYPORT BBQ BLUES (2024)
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