America may have invented rock and roll. When Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley took the blues, mashed it up with a little country, sped it up and made it, all about fucking as opposed to pining over a lost love, they created the bedrock of everything we listen to today…as well as single handedly creating something that had never really previously existed, youth culture. Now, over time, many bands have taken the original blueprint, fleshed it out, added a bit here and there to create a myriad of subcultures; heavy metal, grunge, punk, psychedelia, mod,…etc and rock and roll has become a tree of many and varied branches. Yet, nestled deep in the heart of Devon, lies a band that are distilling rock and roll back to its primal and visceral beginnings. It is my joy, nay, my honour to introduce you to Crooked Little Sons.
Crooked Little Sons wear sharp suits, they play fast, they play short songs, they shout and holler and they leave you completely wrung out yet begging for more. And so it was on a hot night in Plymouth last August, Crooked Little Sons took to the stage in front of a modest audience on a Friday night and proceeded to treat the crowd to a show befitting Wembley Stadium. You see, Crooked Little Sons care not for the size of the venue or even the size of the crowd. They care about making sure that every single person in the room gets an amped up, hyper-charged dose of pure rock and roll and this album delivers that in spades…even if you weren’t fortunate enough to be there in person. Thankfully I was.
So, as a journalist, I guess it is my job to provide you with some like-minded musical comparisons so you can paint a mental image of how the band sounds. Ok, let’s go with The Hives, The Bronx, Motorhead, The Hellacopters, Zen Guerilla, The Jim Jones Revue…you get the picture? Fast, unrelenting punk rock and roll that is delivered, even in a live setting with all the abandon of a streaker at a football match yet the precision of a fresh razor blade. Let’s start with drummer Lee Lane. He beats the drums like they’ve just called his mum a whore. It a brutal yet precise pistol whipping that propels these tunes with a lethal intensity. On bass Larry Collinson Brown gets his head down and lays a fuzzy bedrock that locks in with Lane’s drumming like 2 dogs in mating season. Stage left is Marcus Osbourne who slashes at his rusty, blood stained Gretsch and produces riffs that are equal parts Chuck Berry, Johnny Ramone and broken glass! Finally, out front, on vocals and occasional guitar when he remembers, is Josh Bessant, a man who is part James Brown, part Johnny Cash, part Iggy Pop and part Wold War 2 spiv! He leads from the front, and by the front I mean, rarely even on the stage, not if there is a table, bar or someone’s shoulders to be on. From the very beginning he scoops the audience up into the palms of his hands and plays them like tiny puppets to do his bidding…and as a man who is never at a loss for words he has plenty of bidding.
Every ounce of the thrill of the Crooked Little Sons live experience pours out of this recording. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t there. With a little imagination, and Martha Fitzpatrick’s fantastic cover photo, you can be. What really matters is that you don’t go through the rest of your life never having experienced this in person. Rock and roll is music for the stage. Crooked Little Sons own the stage. This recording is as close as you’ll get to finding that out without being there to smell the sweat on Josh Bessant’s moustache! 9/10
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