Evoking the sound of a few friends summoning Joplin and Johnson in some junky garage, Brother K rely on cranked tube amps and going-for-broke vocals to leave its mark on your brain.

5 MP3 Songs in this album (22:39) !
Related styles: Rock: Garage Rock, Blues: Electric Blues, Featuring Guitar

People who are interested in Johnny Cash The Animals White Stripes should consider this download.


Details:
"Margery," the psycho-shuffle opening track on Brother K's new EP, makes clear what this NYC-based outfit is all about: howling vocals and cranked tube amps. Listen to the Bo Diddley riff placed at the center of "Margery"'s chorus, and you'll get a sense of the respect the band has for its antecedents. But although Brother K summons the spirit of Joplin and Johnson, it refuses purism, drawing on punk's volatility, pop's sense of melody, and the blues' pathos in equal measure (sometimes in the same song). Eschewing a bassist, Brother K leaves enough space at the bottom end of the sonic spectrum to evoke a few friends rocking towards catharsis in some junky garage.

Brother K's words matter as much as its sound: frontman Lucas Kwong, a one-time English major and unrepentant bibliophile, is as interested in telling stories as he is in the pentatonic scale. On the new EP, Claws and Stripes Forever, Kwong shrieks, mutters and croons his way through lyrics that range to smartass theologizing ("Thomas Aquinas, get thee behind us!") to imagist wordplay ("A thousand interstates entangled the fortunes of the newly fangled"). Like a barroom fight breaking out in the middle of a revival tent, or maybe a revival meeting breaking out in the middle of a bar, Brother K rocks out at the nexus of sin and salvation.