Modey Lemon are rock resuscitaters

While muscles are busy obeying the rhythm and a deluge of impressions is savaging senses, the old brainbox is striving to sort out this delicious noise. Avant-rock, surreal-rock, abstract-rock? We dunno but this Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, trio of two guitarists/Moogists and a drummer, brings charisma and hunter’s soul back to the genre. Frontman Phil Boyd’s all snarling vocals, intense twisting notes and catwalk looks delivering songs that regularly stalk the wild side.

There are too many acts out there that simply comply with the formula and are happy to churn out (increasingly diluted) replicas of their most successful album. Modey Lemon, from the moment of taking to the stage, deliver a set that alternates between kind of noise-fest that’s been missing from the agenda and electro FXs: punk with electronical embellishments, basic riffing with interstellar noodling, revulsion (of mainstream) and revolt connecting with cosmic dust.

Lazy media-types will group this lot with the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club types but this is light years beyond it: the initial inspiration of MC5/The Stooges and Suicide has been re-loaded with elements of Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, The Doors, Captain Beefheart, The Cramps, Dr John… God (no, not him), one could right a book of names that are recalled in the grooves of the band’s sophomore LP.

Behind singer Boyd, and newest member Jason Kirker – sporting a controversial trucker’s hat of Smith & Wesson company at the beginning – the powerhouse is Paul Quattrone whose drumming style (and energy employed) appears to be just like a more in-control Keith Moon (the late Who stickman) with such huge beats that truly obliterate need for a bass guitar. ‘Enemy’ (from the second album ‘Thunder & Lightning’, out in the US but not until Jan. in Europe) is the first slice of totally ferocious track that creates aural lacerations and cause developing taste for high-maintenance ladies.

Modey Lemon have a rather unusual take on music that is equally complex and minimalist; arrangements are rather composite while the delivery, due to the nature of instruments, remains on the minimalist side. The end result is rock as an existentialist force with lyrics that read more like poetry than the usual emo-crap troubling mainstream ‘musos’. “Bread of life” is a line from ‘Crows’, a direct reference to the French poet Rimbaud (Arthur, 1854-91); this is ‘eavy but – are women inspired by intel or the size… of a comic talent?

‘Slow Death’ could be the most precious gem amidst many jewels on the disc that will be slightly different than its American ‘original’, and thus longer but, alas, not much than about 35 minutes! The lead single of the album, ‘Predator’, is a futuristically rockistic audio slice that paints a (lyrical) picture of a woman who is a cross between a bitch, witch and an alien. Otherwise, a song about carnal knowledge that is such a monstrous track The Darkness members gotta be frightened into hiding behind a sofa as if Modey crew were the Daleks!?

Nihilists argue that the planet has met its Waterloo but all we know is that Modey Lemon could provide more than its appropriate soundtrack. We wobble out totally wasted.