Endless Boogie
Vibe Killer

A few days ago I wrote about the album by Hugo Race and Michelangelo Russo, in which the two musicians focused on reinterpreting nine classics by John Lee Hooker. A sort of rapid-fire recording that gave life to an album 'John Lee Hooker's World Today' which is a reinterpretation of nine songs by one of the main musicians in the history of blues.

This time, however, we are talking about a band that made its devotion to these musical genres and to musicians like John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters one of the starting points upon which they developed their unique sound, typically rock and roll with acidic undertones in the style of MC5 and kraut-rock inspirations.

Compared to a reinterpretation of John Lee Hooker by Captain Beefheart and a formation like Grinderman, NYC's Endless Boogie released their latest album on May 19, 2017, via No Quarter Records. The album is titled 'Vibe Killer' and just like the previous 'Nothing For The Water' was ideally inspired by the figure of a headhunter like Thomas F. Byrnes, the head of the New York police department from 1880 to 1885, this time our guys lift the lid on another dark page in the history of the United States of America.

This time we are talking about Aaron Burr, an American politician born in Newark in February 1756 and vice president of the United States under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. His story is particularly controversial. A member of the Federalist party and then joined the Democratic-Republican party, he became famous for having killed his political rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel and for later being accused of high treason due to a suspected secession of some western territories. He was released in 1807 for lack of evidence, but the story remains today full of more shadows than lights. He is certainly a controversial figure and in 1805 at the head of the 'Burr Conspiracy' he proposed to occupy the territories held by the Spanish crown with a plot that was believed would have, in the case, altered the integrity of the United States.

It seems that this band has a certain fascination for characters that have gone down in history as 'infamous' and whose reputations were negative both during their lifetimes and afterward. A fascination with such negative figures that associates the Endless Boogie with Nick Cave's imagery and which the band translates this time into an album of seven rock and roll songs charged with rock and roll fury in the style of Lou Reed (including the use of spoken-word), MC5 and Blue Cheer acidity, heavy-psych reverberations (Black Mountain, The Black Angels...) and kraut-rock inspiration.

The result is an especially powerful and effective album in its hallucinated acid blues suggestions. Highly recommended if you are having rock and roll withdrawal symptoms.