BLUES CONTROL - Local Flavor

Blues Control return after the disasters of "Puff" (2007) and "Blues Control" (2008) (and various other odds and ends), and come out with an album that's even more scatterbrained and evanescent than its predecessors.

Here Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse all but abandon the frazzled noise, somewhere between Royal Trux and Comets On Fire, that had defined them up to now, and move closer to a kind of post-atomic psychedelia that throws everything and the kitchen sink into the pot. How does it turn out? Well, with all due respect, "Local Flavor" is yet another natural disaster, as usual.

For instance, in the slapstick of "Good Morning" Blues Control drag a Fletcher Henderson-style piano swing into the psychedelic swamp, and when a feedback-soaked guitar emerges in the background, it feels like stumbling into some bizarre equestrian circus. "Rest On Water" is a bouquet of clichés, caught between basement-lounge atmospheres and the usual hallucinogenic haze of synths and guitars.

"Tangler" is the most interesting track, with its minimal rhythm straight out of 90s house, while the closing "On Through The Night" sums up all of Blues Control's confusion, with a textbook cosmic-trip opening and closing and a textbook dub-inflected middle section.

But it's all shaky and muddled - in short, it's still unclear where Blues Control are trying to go. I suspect listening to Gang Gang Dance must have influenced them a bit too much. And let's hope they don't listen to Gala Drop - or actually, at this point, let's hope they do.

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16/09/2009