By: Thomas Bell

This is their second full-length. They are an Ecstatic Peace! Band because they received a MySpace message from Thurston Moore (they thought it was a joke!) that said, “Give me a call sometime.” A very young band, they don’t sound it. Somehow, they sound as though they grew up as roadies for MC5 and 13th Floor Elevators, taking it all in, spending their spare time at acid rock shows or thrashing on their skateboards to a Black Flag soundtrack. The rockers are: Michael Awesome (nee Troutman) –Bass, and Allison Awesome (nee Busch) – Drums, and Awesome Derek (nee Stanton) – guitars/vox. The most staight-up rock band on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! Records, there is much more here than your dad’s classic rock. Not so much a power-pop trio as a power-rock trio, Stanton and Troutman’s guitars interweave savage riffs and blues and funk-inspired grooves to Busch’s punishing and relentless drumming.

They echo the volatile energy of legendary, fellow Michigan bands (though they now live in Brooklyn), The Stooges and the aforementioned MC5, while also infusing their music with a dose of the grittier bits of Black Sabbath. Even the cover art of Electric Aborigines is evocative of the pen-and-ink, psychedelic art of the sixties. In fact, the record sounds almost as though it could have been recorded in the late sixties, that is, if the band had time-traveled to the present to pick up some technological gadgetry and the best sludge, drone, and grunge motifs from the decades in between.

From the opening moments of first track, Eyes of Light, one knows this is going to be a wild, frenetic ride, if not precisely what kind of music it is. The tempos and beats vary and even slow groovers, like sixth track, “Outside Tonight” bounce with R&B-influenced propulsion and Beggars Banquet-era Rolling Stones bravado. The last tracks feature minimal vocals and utilize the kind of freeform, free-rock, instrumentals that distinguished their first album.

Self-described as “noise provocateurs and impressionists, ace players with punk rock flair, inspired citizens of a small modernist nation of musical, visual, and literary outrage on the outskirts of Brooklyn, or a rainbow amalgam of all of the above at once,” yet the noise is almost preternaturally organized. It is as though this record is one classic rock-infused thing on the surface, but with a vast cauldron of chaotic noise-athleticism smoldering, and knowingly hidden, below its surface. Electric Aborigines is filled with volatile blasts of muscular, dirty guitar rock with garage-punk energy, syncopated drumming, slithering bass lines, and vocals that powerfully evoke the moods that drive the songs to the outer limits of hip swerving intensity and swagger.