Heavy Trash

Latest Jon Spencer project. This time he teams up with a pile of friends and unashamedly plunders rockabilly, roots rock as he has been for the last decade or two. This stuff veers from traditional Sun recordings feel all the way to the Lower East Side boho meldings that he (along with a few others) can claim responsibility for. Cool rootsy noisey stuff. Spencer seems to be listening more to Hank Williams these days than Howlin Wolf. A little history might be warranted for those of you to whom Jon Spencer only rings a bell: Spencer, along with Neil Michael Haggarty (see recent Howling Hex) gained fame in their early 80's band Pussy Galore where they invented garbage-can percussion junkie swamp chic, plundering roots rock with punk ethic, disposing "quality" instrumentation for pieces of metal, garbage-can lids, and crappy guitars. By the end of the 80's Haggarty split off, along with Jennifer Herrema (see recent RTX) to take "junkie chic" to another huge influential level with their band Royal Trux. Spencer took another route, that of plundering roots rock, giving it a raw undeniable sweaty sexy passion, first with his foxey model wife Christina in a band called Boss Hog then with his wildly successful Blues Explosion. It can be argued that the entire New York City "new garage" revival/scene can be attributed directly to Spencer or within one degree of separation.

1) basic acoustic feel traditional rockabilly, except for when the searing distorto geetar lead comes in, yeah baby
2) dirty swamp
3) FCC ("shit")
4) dark western blues, old school a la Hank Williams
5) upbeat surfy rockabilly
6) another forelorn howling sad one in the spirit of Hank Williams, but some interesting instrumentation
7) more of a boogie blues rock feel
8) echoey vocs, dark big production, slow hip grinding blues swing, hitting all cylinders, almost Johnny Dowd 9) another traditional rockabilly feel, upbeat, piss drinking lewd content but the double entendres are above the heads of most children and right wing christians
10) train chugging rockabilly
11) almost early 70's soulful rock ballad feel to this, whoa
12) continuation of sorts of the previous track, the romantic balladeering takes on a 50's cry-baby tone
13) upbeat rocker, boogie with soulful Spencer'isms/gospel preaching stylings