Today’s Sounds: Triple Hex

Record:

Triple Hex, E.P. (Mon Amie)

 
Brooklyn’s Triple Hex aren’t breaking new ground with their charcoal blues-rock sound, but their mining skills are right on. The band’s raw, wiry approach to this seemingly perennial style, coloured with a contemporary alt sensibility and old-school NYC grit, conjures memories of (The Idiot-era) Iggy Pop, the Cramps and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, complete with leathery come-ons, carnal preoccupations and a serious sense of humour. The superhuman depth of Dave Hex’s baritone crooning is almost laughable in itself. But when he’s spitting out “I don’t wanna hear a love song, I just wanna fuck” four times fast, it’ll tickle your funny bone till it gets annoying.

Listening to these six tracks, released on New Year’s Day, it comes as no surprise that the band once flirted with rockabilly and hippie rock — that vintage guitar chug and dizzy electric organ remain in full effect — but they’re above churning out predictable genre music. It sounds as if they’ve digested classic rock, punk rock, college rock and post-modern alt-rock to produce the leanest, blackest dump possible — coal, with a glimmer of gem in it.

The record’s opening salvo, “Winter,” strikes with greasy riffs and sleazy subterranean oration, while “Deranged” showcases meatier, more melodic guitars and vocals that make Ian Curtis sound like a choirboy. E.P. wraps with “Kill,” a pagan goth number with deadpan duet chanting and metal-esque guitars that swivel into squirrely dissonance at the halfway point. It’s the most absurd track on a pretty absurd record, but it’s loveable, and potentially convincing enough to trick your parents/boss into thinking you’re into some spooky shit.
 

Track:

Factory Floor, “Fall Back”

 
The latest in a series of 12-inch singles from London goth-dance trio Factory Floor is pretty killer. Have a listen.
 

 

Video:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “We No Who U R”

 
This is the first track from Cave & co.’s upcoming album Push the Sky Away, out next month. If you dig the Birthday Party or early Bad Seeds, the song won’t be as dark and nasty as you want it to be, and the video isn’t as wild as you’d expect given that it was directed by notorious French auteur Gaspar Noé. You almost wish there was a rape scene, a savage beating or Paz de la Huerta’s beef curtains up in there. (Cave himself seems to have channelled his darkness into film in recent years, Grinderman notwithstanding.) But here, Noé’s focuses on the subtle, mysterious beauty of a human shadow in the forest at night. Go figure.