Red Aunts
"Bad Motherfucken 40oz." CD (Sympathy)
Loud, obnoxious and rocking as all Hell during the Devil's chili cookoff. Sure, the unintelligible screeching and garage acoustics wear thin after a bit, but there's a lyrics sheet. What more do you want? It may be amateurish mid-tempo punk but cuts like "Batman A-Go-Go" and "Terri Baby" are stone rockers while "Smoke" tears by in 26 seconds (less if you ignore the chatter). The album may be a bit short for your cash (under 24 minutes), but if you're bored, try this for something truly raw.
"Saltbox" CD (Epitaph)
And the rock rolls on ... but it isn't the raucous, raunchy rawk featured on "#1 Chicken." Instead, it's closer to the band's early work which in turn had more to do with Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones' mid-70's output than the fucked-up, blown-out garage stylings of their last record. This cops a bluesy feel, groping the idiom in a dark corner of a darker club, then hitting the stage with mussed hair and smeared lipstick to rework and restructure every one of those old riffs into something which suits the band. Somewhere, I think Bo Diddley is smiling.