| · Low gets nasty.
Over Low’s decade-long career, the Duluth, Minnesota three-piece nearly single-handedly gave birth to the entire slo-core movement. At times, however, it’s been easy to wonder if they’d wanted to just rock-out for a spell.
A rather resounding yes (make that, "Hell Yeah!") comes in the form of Alan Sparhawk’s garage-rock side project The Black-Eyed Snakes. Following 2001’s self-titled debut (featuring blues-rock versions of Low and Moby tracks), Rise Up! marks a noisy return, nearly eclipsing Sparhawk’s day job on an altogether different level.
Since Jon Spencer started sucking on his lame Plastic Fang, someone had to come in and pick up the slack. "Cornbread" rumbles under Sparhawk’s madman yelp, and Mimi Parker gets all soulful in the background on "Good Woman Blues," while "Bo Diddley" borrows a page or two from the titular man himself. The opening title track shoots straight through 95 per cent of the supposed new rock renaissance, making Sparhawk and friends at the forefront now of not one genre, but two.
Thank God for the Black-Eyed Snakes – back to make sure the blues done get all blowed up but good again. It’s harder than ever to believe these cats are clean-living Mormons out in the middle of nowhere.
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