Cuts - 2 Over Ten

The Cuts are four twenty-somethings from Oakland, California, who make some of the best garage pop that you'll find today. The Cuts' wild sonic tantrums and lust-scorched anthems are so soaked in Nuggets history it's hard to believe they weren't conceived in the same fertile musical ground that produced bands like the Sonics and ? and the Mysterians. The band blends old-school, psychedelic garage with '70s NYC proto-punk noise (a couple songs are so Television it's crazy) - but these guys make the blend seamless. The guitars come off cheap and messy; the vocals are amped, snotty, and slightly distorted; the keyboards whiz around like some woozy Dennis Hopper drug sequence, and the rhythms switch between jangling so loosely they're gonna slip right out of your speakers and getting wound so tight they're gonna snap. The band released their debut album as a vinyl-only edition on Mark Murman's Rock n' Roll Blitzkrieg Records (watch for Birdman to issue it on CD in 2003) and, though low profile in record stores, it received rave reviews. For their second album the Cuts drove down to Memphis and recorded at Easley Studios with Greg Cartwright (Oblivion's, Compulsive Gamblers, Reigning Sound) at the control board. This album promises to be a straight up classic!