Hot Snakes: Jericho Sirens 12″ (new)

Description

After a 14-year hiatus from the studio,Hot Snakeskick down the door with their new album,Jericho Sirens. The record blasts out of the speakers with the furious “I Need a Doctor,” inspired by Rick Froberg’s experience needing a doctor’s note in order to miss an important work function. ThroughoutJericho Sirens, Froberg commiserates with the frustration and torrential apathy that seems to be a fixture in our daily lives, while also reminding us that we have no fucking clue.

“Songs like Death Camp Fantasy’ and Jericho Sirens’ are about that,” he says. “No matter where you look, there’re always people saying the world’s about to end. Every movie is a disaster movie. I’m super fascinated by it. It is hysterical, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It snowballs, like feedback, or my balls on the windshield.”

Musically, the album incorporates the most extreme fringes of theHot Snakessound (the vein-bulging, 78-second “Why Don’t It Sink In?” the manic, Asian Blues on speed of “Having Another?”), while staying true to longstanding influences such as the Wipers, Dead Moon, Michael Jackson, and Suicide on propulsive tracks such as “Six Wave Hold-Down.” Other moments like the choruses of “Jericho Sirens” and “Psychoactive” nod to Status Quo and AC/DC.

Our take: When most bands come back from a long absence or a break-up, theyre content to deliver something thats simply good enough, if not outright bad. Perhaps its that bands tend to tepidly imitate their old material rather than trying to push past it, or maybe its because theyre not that invested in their old project and simply dont try hard enough. Regardless, none of those are problems with the new Hot Snakes album, as Jericho Sirens , their first album in 14 years, is as good as or better than any of their other three full-lengths. While there are nods to their older material (like the touches of melodica peppered throughout the record) and plenty of songs that are very much in the vein of their old stuff (like Six Wave Hold-Down or the anthemic title track), much of the album seems like the band is pushing themselves to play harder, faster, and weirder than they did on their previous records. Whether its the blistering fast changes on Why Dont It Sink In, or the wild, Big Black-esque riffing on Having Another?, the baroque density of the riffing and the tightness and complexity of the playing (with many of the songs in mega-quirky time signatures) is truly next-level. Its intellectually interesting, but its also viscerally exciting to listen to a band blow through musical boundaries and just let it rip like this. Yeah, theyre pretty much just showing off, but its more like someone showing off by driving their car dangerously close to the edge of a cliff than the stiff formalism of a classical music recital. Jericho Sirens is a thrilling listen, and one of the most genuinely exciting records to appear so far in 2018.