Album of the Day 8/1/10

Every day, we count down the best albums of all time all the way to #1. Sunday’s album is #912:

The Mofos – Supercharged on Alcohol

Guitarist Gary Siperko (now with the Whiskey Daredevils) fronted this snarling, amphetamine noir surf band circa 2002. Their lone cd is simply one of the most exhilarating albums ever made, a blend of reverb-drenched horror surf, noir soundtrack and Link Wray-style stomps. Siperko is a master of vicious, macabre chromatic surf guitar, all reverb-drenched intensity. The textures here are to die for – layers and layers and layers of distortion and twang and blazing fury – and the tunes are worthy of Big Lazy or Friends of Dean Martinez. Adrenaline usually gets the upper hand here, as on the aptly titled Satan A-Go-Go or the surprisingly poignant, funereal Drag City. The offhandedly titled Dune Buggy War at Pismo Beach is a masterpiece of wild guitar fury; there’s also a punk spaghetti western number, a punk flamenco song and the vicious, chromatically-charged Fuck Art, Let’s Make Money. No song has ever been more ironically titled. And 2 Minutes to Live is one of the few songs we blinked on when we did our Best 666 songs of All Time list – it’s a virtual line of cocaine, one that won’t kill you. These guys probably never made a dime from this but their brilliance will last forever. The album is still available at cdbaby.

Another Great Album from the Whiskey Daredevils

The title of these Cleveland roots rockers’ new album, Introducing the Whiskey Daredevils, is characteristically tongue-in-cheek – it isn’t exactly their first. Over the last six years, they’ve put out one kick-ass album after another, all laced with their trademark sense of humor: they are simply one of the funniest bands on the planet. Some of their greatest hits (some but not all of which appear on their Greatest Hits album) include a tribute to Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor, a surreal chronicle about a road trip with a guy who can’t stop talking about Planet of the Apes, and the most hilarious song ever written about open mic nights for singer-songwriters. This album is their first with their new guitarist Gary Siperko, who brings a ferocious garage-punk intensity as well as a growling Stonesy edge and a solid handle on country sounds. Frontman Gary Miller’s deadpan, stoic delivery lets his surreal, absolutely spot-on narratives speak for themselves: he’s got a Hunter S. Thompson-class eye for twisted detail. Siperko – formerly of upstate New York surf rockers the Mofos, whose album Supercharged on Alcohol is a genuine classic – veers between an otherworldly reverb-drenched tone and gritty, vintage tube amp distortion while bassist Ken Miller and drummer Leo P. Love hold the beast to the rails.

The opening track, Never Saw Johnny Cash chronicles a series of missed once-in-a-lifetime opportunities from the point of view of a guy who always overdoes it: we all have somebody like that in our lives who likes to go to shows with us (or at least ride to shows with us). They follow that with an amped-up Bakersfield country song. With its sizzling, surfy ghoulabilly guitar, Left Me on a Train could be a Radio Birdman classic from 1979, a sound they bring down a little on the next track, Thicker Than Wine. Then they take it to the logical extreme with the garage-punk smash Drive: Murder City Nights, anybody?

As breakup songs go, the midtempo country ballad Last Guest List is a classic: “No more free stuff, no more free beer, I guess you are no longer with the band.” There’s also the predictably amusing, painfully hungover Me and My Black Eye; a southwestern gothic rock parody; the monster surf instrumental Railbender, which sounds like a Mofos classic; a Social Distortion-style country-punk number with a little Led Zep thrown in; and the album’s closing boogie, Empty Out the Shake, which is pretty self-explanatory, and as amusing as you’d think. The band’s best album? Maybe. The others are really good too. The Whiskey Daredevils’ next gig is August 6 at 10 PM at the Happy Dog, 5801 Detroit Ave. in Cleveland.