(album, Stag O Lee)
Garage legends the Fuzztones’ first studio set since 2008’s parpin’ Horny As Hell, oozes from the speakers with malign intent, dropping globs of goo goo muck on the carpet and cutting up the rug.
A dark swirling vortex of sound in twelve chapters, Preaching To The Perverted comes wrapped in a cover reminiscent of comic book heavyweight Sal Buscema’s finest 1970s work, and once in motion, the disc sets out on just the kind of trip that all fans of this great band would have hoped for. The barely restrained mad-scientist garage of ‘My Black Cloud’ sets banks of keyboard vapour rolling in across the Styx, only to be torn asunder by Lenny Silver’s jagged fuzz squalls and troubled by mainman Rudi Protrudi’s ghosts-in-the-cheese vocal. ‘Between The Lines’ coils itself around a serpentine Doors-style grove that comes to us by way of the Pigeon Toed Orange Peel, while ‘Flirt, Hurt and Desert’ furthers the Varanoid theme by whirlpooling around its own axis like a self-devouring snake.
The ‘tones present their already well established authentic garage credentials with ‘Launching Sanity’s Dice’ (geddit?) and garnish them with Lana Loveland’s lush Vox and a superb, brief instrumental freakout. Preaching To The Perverted’s standout track is the episodic ‘Invisible’, a Technicolor brownout that combines an evocative reverb-laden lead with keyboards that intermittently sound like a vintage modem attempting to connect with the afterlife. Such esotery is quickly burned off as the group lay it on the line for ‘Set Me Straight’ – an immediate and direct hunka Sixties-style badlove punk adorned by an enticing vocal, transcendent chorus and strafing lead solo.
An uneasy quietude is restored by the pre-dawn, bass-driven echoplex miasma of ‘Dont Speak Ill of the Dead’, wherein diaphanous wisps of guitar and a haunting keyboard motif gently orbit within their own dimensions. However, such Sputniked ambience is not to last as we are returned to the catacombs by the heavy elemental resurrection shuffle of ‘Old’ – which pounds its way toward a nefarious peak, aided by a harp break from Hades.
‘This Game Called Girl’ ushers in the disc’s sexy segment with a priapic up-tempo groove that evokes images of naked bodies writhing beneath ½ watt fluorescent blacklights as valves flicker and hum. Further woo is pitched by ‘Lust Pavilion’, a transgressive timecheck from 69-o-clock, where sultry instrumentation causes zips defending layers of PVC and suede to open of their own accord and wraps up with a truly post-coital coda. ‘Bound To Please’ is similarly horny, juxtaposing sweet chorus-infused guitar and soft vocal enticements against BDSM bordello lyrics before expanding into a funky, fuzzy, fuckfest.
By now stained with traces of most of the body’s grab bag of fluids, Preaching To The Perverted gets ready for repose by concluding with a subtle, piano and vocal invitation to lay with the damned. Who could resist? Not me.
Originally posted 2011-06-10 17:43:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
