The Main Street Gospel Love Will Have Her Revenge
Tee Pee
Blowin’ in on the winds of yesteryear is The Main Street Gospel, a country-psych band with ties to Brian Jonestown Massacre and a sound so steeped in nostalgia and tradition you gotta blow the dust off of it just to discover the true treasure it really is. Love Will Have Her Revenge, the Ohio trio’s debut, is a laid back approach to the usual foot-stomp of mustache rock, and gets its point across by way of delicate pop melodies, tin cup blues, and breezy jams. While none of the songs here are exceptionally overpowering in their virility, they do have amazing breadth, depth, and reach, like the thick roots of an old and impressive tree. Not only that, but they shake and hum at times with a journeyman vibe, as the longest songs on deck (“Fool’s Gold,” “Ready to Shine,” and “She’s a Disease”) draw you into a solitary world of lonely rural squatting and the hallucinations it might induce with their 70s-inspired freak-folk rock. You’ll be able to hear a wide array of influences on this one, like Neil Young, Wilco, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Dead Meadow, and Blood Meridian, but in the end it’s just good ol’ rock n’ roll — vulnerable, honest, heartfelt, and a tad trippy.
Check out MSG performing the title track from Love Will Have Her Revenge!
I’m not going to say that Dax Riggs (former Acid Bath and Deadboy & The Elephantmen front man) is the best singer/songwriter in America because, well, I can’t actually prove a statement like that, but he’s awfully fucking good, and I can’t think of too many people who come close to touching his evil, dark, misanthropic folk rock. As experienced on 2007′s We Sing of Only Blood or Love, the Louisiana musician’s solo outputs contain all the folly and misery of suffering, loneliness, torment, and death — meaning they’re completely and utterly human — and Say Goodnight to the World once again represents our most dire straits via rolling graveyard shuffles (“Say Goodnight to the World,” “I Hear Satan,” “Sleeping With the Witch”), fuzzy rockers (“Gravedirt on My Blue Suede Shoes,” “No One Will Be a Stranger,” “Let Me Be Your Cigarette”), and swampy, haunting dirges (“You Were Born to Be My Gallows,” “Like Moonlight,” “See You All in Hell or New Orleans”). Of course, it’s his babbling, bourbon-basted, bayou tongue that really puts the hoodoo in his musical voodoo, like he’s channeling his inner dead Elvis with a mouth full of curses and bats, which is why his cover of “Heartbreak Hotel” is one spooky, bad-ass moment. Do yourself a favour and get into Dax Riggs if you haven’t already.
The Main Street Gospel
Dax Riggs