No matter what Jon Spencer does, it’s bound to be sexy. Not just sexy as in he’s an attractive man, but sexy as in funky guitar, howling-moaning vocals and the dirtiest lyrics ever set to a retro-roots beat.
With Heavy Trash, Spencer’s teamed up with Matt Verta-Ray of Speedball Baby to make an avant-rockabilly record that’s stripped down to classic essentials.
This is a guitar-vocals record–all else is incidental. There are bits and pieces of country, R&B, blues (of course) and straight-up rock here, murder ballads and songs of lust and love, hate and cheatin’, songs you could picture John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing to at Jackrabbit Slim’s in heroin-and-coke-fueled abandon, and songs you’d wail along to along on a lost highway at 3 AM.
Verta-Ray and Spencer have been adding their special breeds of insanity to American music for many years now, and with this record they continue to decimate and recreate classic rock’n’roll, bringing it back to the sex-love-death roots that made rock scary when it first burst into existence fifty-some-odd years ago. Some art hits you in the head, some in the heart, some in the gut, but this record takes aim a bit lower–it’ll make you move your hips and incite some lustful activity. It’s as rockabilly as it should be: dirty, sexy and proud of it.
