Thursday, September 20, 2007

Myspace: Mongrels


Mongrels is a Canadian five piece that is in sense a supergroup of lesser-knowns, drawing members from Tricky Woo, Bionic, Blood Sausage and Local Rabbits (I haven't heard of all of them either). They mix a stoner 70s hard rock influence with garage and soul to create heavy, sludgey grooves for singer Amy Turok's wailing voice. Two drummers add heaviness (almost like multi-tracking a guitar, but more natural) rather than the polyrhythmic approach you'd expect.

"Contemplating the..." moves slowly, but steadily with loose rhythms and mindnumbing riffs. Turok's voice is rich and full with the perfect grittiness and gives the song continuity as it gets heavier and lighter. The garagey soul of "City Living" is almost on par with the MC5, but the chorus is just a little too standard, with a common hook only slightly hidden beneath the rawness of the music. "All in My Head" has some searing guitar riffs without getting complicated. It takes advantage of their dual drummer approach and brings it all together with an upbeat, but soulful chorus that's catchy and anything but average.

Mongrels is like a one band embodiment of late 60s Detroit, bringing heavy garage rock and raw soul together into a near perfect mix. Sure, there are other bands doing this, but few are doing it as well as Mongrels.

Myspace

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1 Comments:

Blogger taotechuck said...

Holy Stephen Harper, Batman! These guys rock!

Your interview set my expectations perfectly (ugh. I hate complimenting you.) but the music was even better than I was expecting. The recording isn't great, but the performance is very strong.

I'm not sure I hear the need for the two drummers. it kind of reeks of Ned's Atomic Dustbin-esque novelty.

10:59 AM  

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