Share UNPROFITABLE SERVANT - The Bonniwells (Z-Man)
If you're going to name your band after the mai nman in The Music Machine you better shape up or ship the fuck out. With a lineage partly drawn from The Frowning Clouds (as well as Bleach and Last Gypsys - both new to me) you suspect it's going to be pretty good. Whatever positive preconceptions you have, they may be dwarfed when you hit that play button the first time.Where The Frowning Clouds eschew the heavy fuzz that's a lifeblood to most '60s throwbacks (term used in the nicest way), The Bonniwells embrace it like a lush devours martinis. It's noisy and ragged and far removed from the muted grooves of the Clouds, for whom drummer Zac Olsen is principal songwriter and member. This is altogether more withering than lilting, and in your face like a debt collector.
Opener "I Don't Need You Know More" (sic) sounds like a bunch of chain being scraped across a bathroom floor, but that's only after guitarist Marck Dean drawls the song title (and main lyric) like he's crawled out of the depths of a five-day migraine. Stabbing guitar underlines his message just in case it didn't sink in from the outset. It's edgy stuff alright, but the abrasion ante is upped by a factor of five on "Bad Seeds". Now this is how Nick Cave's band of the similar name should sound - or did before Blixa took his discordant noise elsewhere. Anchored in the '60s but sounding like the band dreamt it last week, this is fearsomely good.
The gong for highest fuzz quotient (the envelope please) goes jointly to "Cracked Hands", a wailing two-minute crawl through a garden full of prickly pears that oddly grinds to a halt just as it's ramping up, and "Predictable Piece of Shit", the latter an angry wall of psych sludge.
You thought (wished) you'd heard your last version of "Louie Louie"? Meet The Bonniwells version ("Louie Lou-aah"), a fractured take on the traditional "can't play we're too drunk" frat song that descends into something more sinister than amore toga party around the keg. A trippy breakdown takes it out over the edge. This is what The Sonics would have sounded like if they took acid.
Just eight songs over 20 minutes but who cares, this stuff is often best administered in small but lethal doses. - The Barman
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