Pack A.D.
(Mint)
You know how Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys has that classic Brit-blooze bellow down pat? A combined Paul Rodgers (Free)/Ian Gillan (Deep Purple)/Rusty Day (Cactus – technically not British, but still..) yowl/growl/screech that oozes so much testosterone that if distilled and tossed into a blender you’d have a nice lemon shake to gulp down after each Keys concert.
Auerbach can lick the stiletto boots of the Pack A.D.’s Becky Black, who on the band’s second platter in less than 9 months emits some of the most lung-shredding pulchritude since Janis Joplin departed for the great shootin’ gallery in the sky. In fact, keep those namechecks in the first paragraph close: at times Black’s a drop-dead doppelganger for Rodgers, but where Rodgers is all stomping bluster, Black’s a swaggering femme, with this slinky little signature quiver in her voice that catches you just off-guard enough to suggest that you’d be well advised to append a “fatale” to the “femme” part of the tag if you ever find yourself alone in her presence. Think PJ Harvey gwine on down to de delta for some serious soul food and returned clutching a jack of spades in one hand and a stone-honed shiv in the other. You don’t wanna turn your back on this Black gal.
Funeral Mixtape capitalizes on Tintype (issued back in January), which had reviewers essentially pegging the Vancouver duo — Black, plus teeth-rattling percussionist Maya Miller — as a distaff Black Keys. The White Stripes inevitably surfaced in commentary as well (although, oddly, critics failed to jump on the Jack White – Becky Black name-game pun potential), and for those writers really paying attention, the occasional comparison was drawn between the Pack A.D. and North Carolina’s Moaners, another powerhouse guitar/drum female duo. But where Tintype had a certain shambling, medium-fi charm, Funeral Mixtape obliterates memories of its predecessor through a combination of elegance and brutality.
On the one hand, a slow, hypno-blues trudge such as “Worried” finds Black at her soulful best, emoting through various shades of wail, purr and moan as she conjures the title term in positively bone-weary tones; think a more punk Johnette Napolitano, or Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein drawing the reins in. By contrast, “Don’t Have to Like You” is painted in deep primary colors, Black spitting out venomous lines like, “Don’t have to like you if you can’t take a joke/ Don’t have to like you if your tongue is dead/ Don’t have to like you for what you said,” in between napalm blasts of distorto guitar and Miller’s disorienting cymbal explosions. Elsewhere one encounters a roll-call of blooze-rawk, from moanin’-at-midnight slide-guit meditations to delta minimalism to big-ass choogle; in their stripped-down serendipity, these ladies sound liberated.
If the Pack A.D. had surfaced a few years earlier before the guitar-drums angle hadn’t already passed into the realm of cliché at the hands of a bunch of wannabes, Black and Miller would currently be feted alongside the aforementioned Keys and Stripes. But maybe there’s still time: after more than a century, the blues has yet to go out of style, constantly being rediscovered and revised to suit the particulars of young acolytes. There’s something raw and primal about this band that goddam hard to ignore.
Standout Tracks: “Underground,” “Worried” FRED MILLS
[Photo Credit: Mark Maryanovich]
