aaamusic | On 07, Nov 2010

Taking us on his magic carpet ride back fifty years to the land of country-blues rockabilly via a heady dose of 80s attitude and 60s psych-rock is Mark Sultan with his new release, simply titled ‘$’. The brief simplicity of the title, however, belies the nature of what is held inside. This is by no means an artsy album, but Mark Sultan has provided the listener with thirteen rock-solid garage rock stompers stitched like Frankenstein’s monster with rough expertise onto the bones and skin of other genres.

‘Catastrophe’ starts with mad lo-fi guitar bothering before it lurches enthusiastically into a meaty country-blues rock track that borders on psychobilly in its dusty sunbaked menace, Sultan’s yelping unhinged vocal style and choppy guitar only furthering this comparison.

I would highlight ‘Don’t Look Back’ as one of my favourite tracks on offer, being a jangling fast-paced sprint featuring clattering percussion, fun howl-along Misfits backing vocals, manic abuse of an acoustic guitar and surprisingly dark and charmingly eloquent lyrics. The hybrid of east and west in the percussive instrumental is a brief and tantalising glimpse of a raw and understated musical exploration. ‘Icicles’ brings back the overtly dark tones with a feedback-drenched riff so bleak and malevolent it would be comfortably at home on a sludge metal album, underlaid by a wailing melody that filters through like a ghost as the muted percussion stomps beneath an ocean of fuzz. Switches in tempo, mood and melodic approach mean this track isn’t so much a distraction as a focal point in itself as it ramps up the mood to a skin-tingling intensity.

There are some more electrified rockers on offer here, such as the hooky three-chord pogo numbers ‘Go Beserk’ and the truly blistering ‘Status’, recalling The Ramones in its fuzzed-up aggression, albeit with more control and finesse in the songwriting and execution, the rhythms tight without being anal and the production of course much clearer, and the Stooges guitar shriek of ‘Misery’s Upon Us’ in its upbeat and arrhythmic approach to catastrophe, layering rock n roll chords over feedback buzz.

There are slower, longer tracks here too, diversifying and quite possibly intensifying the album as a listening experience. The slow ballad ‘I Am The End’ bears a skin-tingling intro that relies entirely on rattlesnake bells and Mark Sultan’s powerful voice before transforming into a wonky and demented interpretation of those old high school dance songs with distorted guitar strumming out that tender chord progression with unsettling results. The six-and-a-half-minute comparative behemoth ‘Nobody But You’ feels lifted directly from 60s psych-rock in its trippy phaser and phlanger effects and blessed-out romanticism. The menace in undeniably there in the malevolent undertones of the chords and passing notes but this is buried beneath the surface of an enjoyable patchouli-scented rock song.

The unreasonably cheerful twosome hit of ‘I Get Nothing From My Girl’ and ‘I’ll Be Lovin’ You’ both offer up the addictive hooks of pop punk tracks with the outlaw country fuzz of bands like the Supersuckers, the latter being a totally unhinged rendition of an upbeat love song with hop-skip rhythm and tender lyrics all around a buoyant bassline and buzzsaw chords, whereas the former is a blackly humourous song that sounds more like the Beach Boys contemplating suicide more than anything else I can think of.

Album closer ‘Waiting For Me’ blends every last aspect of the album into a moment of shambolic brilliance that lasts less than three minutes. High school American romanticism blends with cheerful morbidity and malevolent guitars playing teeny-bop chord progression, all topped off with the jingling tambourine/bell-led percussion.

It can be argued that the formula many tracks follow here grows wearing, but Mark Sultan shows himself to be a talented and intelligent musician and songwriter time and again on ‘$’. After all, how many people could make an album that sounds like some tracks were recorded on sellotape and yet still make the end result this tantalising?

Author: Katie H Halinski