The Beguiled - Gone Away

Never heard of them before. The Reverend slots them into underground garage-punk. Much more punk-rock with hard edges. TWO KILLER ALBUMS.

Inspired by that B-movie imagery that fueled the tanks of Cramps and Fourgiven, the Beguiled emerge, having made a brief appearance on the beautiful Sounds of Now! alongside Untold Fables, Yard Trauma, Cynics, Zebra Stripes, and Fourgiven themselves, with a whole album of rasping guitars and spooky songs titled Gone Away (which is what the band will do immediately after recording the album, only to return fleetingly years later, just a breath before the tragic passing of Mike Ball, who was the mastermind behind those guitars, NdLYS). Before being enveloped by those mists that on the record take on the consistency of a burial shroud multiple times, especially along the first side of the album.

Under these mists, even two exceptional numbers directly dropped from the sixties, like Next in Line by the Birds and Little Girl by Them, take on the shape of crows with large black wings and bring the band closer to the murky sound of Untold Fables, paving the way for the stunning title track that closes the album with a feverish dose of R&B wrapped in thorns, which, among the tracks signed by the group, competes for the laurel with Psychotic Girl, rising from the muddy swamp of the first part of the record.

With Gone Away, the Beguiled become the Mystery Machine capable of climbing that slope along which California garage rock is sliding at the end of the Eighties.