This is honest-to-God rock music for which revivalists home and afar have been clamoring — the type of music you imagine spilling out the door of some small, sweaty club on the Sunset Strip in the late ’60s. This is the Mad Max of debut EPs: hot, dangerous and tons of fun.
The act opens strong with “The Loner,” feeling lifted right out of The Black Keys’ Thickfreakness. Singer Mike Derrick lets out a gritty howl and killer guitar licks over Zak Lindahl’s ballsy bass line, which grips you by the throat when the three ratchet the noise to 11.
“The Devil and His Hounds” operates under a similar fashion, but gives Derrick a better showcase of his powerhouse aptitude on the drum kit. “So” trudges to a more deliberate start, as blistering as the desert sun over sparse drums and guitar notes that implode around the halfway mark.
The four-track effort closes with the appropriately titled “Sex and Cigarettes,” the sexiest of the bunch. Its sweat-drenched tones rip up the room until they gently fade away.
There’s no pretense and no updating to be found on 3:1, and rightly so. The Black Jack Gypsys have realized there’s no need in trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Listen below and grab it at theblackjackgypsys.bandcamp.com. —Joshua Boydston
Hey! Read This:
• The Black Jack Gypsys interview
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