The BellRays - Let It Blast

This is another album that stays in rotation constantly here in the Swamp. California soul punk group The BellRays inevitably end up described in lazy critical shorthand as "Tina Turner singing for The Stooges" or "Aretha Franklin fronting the MC5" or some such variation, and the band has publicly denounced this line of thinking as the product of feeble minds, but here's the thing: it's true. Not to be reductive, but that really is the basic formula - stop/start bluesy freakouts glazed in molasses vocals and fired in the heat of a nuclear warhead. The record itself, like much of the early BellRays work, is off the cuff and sounds as if it were recorded in one take, with lots of attendant hiss and rattle. The audio equivalent of six glasses of sweet tea and whiskey.
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