The Routes
In This Perfect Hell

The Routes are fundamentally a creation of Christopher Jack, and from this perspective, the making of this album is probably the most effective testament to that.

Recorded in Oregon at the Black Diamond Recording Studios with the assistance of Andrew Shartle in mixing and mastering, Chris Jack practically wrote all the songs and played all the instrumental parts himself, except the drums, which remained the responsibility of drummer Jonathan Hillhouse.

The band, for its part, has undergone several line-up changes over the years, but this is the typical case where even if you change the order of the terms, the result does not change.

Aside from the fact that, as usual, the band's name is more of a 'brand' rather than implying a more or less stable ensemble of musicians, this also happens because the formula proposed by Chris Jack is as simple as it is effective - certainly nothing particularly innovative.

Indeed, 'In This Perfect Hell', released on Groovie Records last February, is a real adrenaline shot that will not disappoint historical fans of the project but generally all those who love certain acid garage sounds tinged with psychedelia.

In the album's presentation, I read references to different bands like The Fall, Spacemen 3, Guided by Voices, and Jesus & Mary Chain, but frankly, I do not recognize any typical elements of these bands in the sound of this album, which instead seems deeply inspired by the easier sound of the Black Angels and generally aims to recreate a certain '60s-'70s garage aesthetic.

The combinations found by Chris Jack are as simple as they are effective. Think of tracks like 'Thousand Forgotten Dreams', 'Something Slipped Through My Window', 'Peeling Face': it essentially sounds like listening to the Kinks after being shuffled inside a Strokes washing machine. 'No Performance': you can hear echoes of Blue Cheer and MC5. 'No Worry': the sound is claustrophobic and at the same time inspired by a shamanism of a Doors matrix. 'Make You Hate Me More', 'Housework In My Head', 'Perfect Hell', 'Oblivious': here you have Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees; 'In Years Go By' offers more pop and evocative sounds that revisit concepts developed and carried forward in recent years by Jacco Gardner and the Temples.

Less talented and pompous than the Black Angels; less frenetic than Thee Oh Sees; less indie than Ty Segall and very far from the schizophrenic genius of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, yet close to a crossroads where Blue Cheer crashes at high speed into Jack and Meg White's White Stripes, the Routes and this album certainly deserve all your attention.

I end with a great question to which I couldn't find an answer.

That is whether the Yoko Ono credited as the author of the album cover's photo is actually Yoko Ono. That is, if we are indeed talking about the influential Japanese artist renowned among other things for being both the partner and muse of John Lennon.

I did an online search and found no answers in this regard. After that, I honestly lost interest in the matter, also because whether or not she may be a supporter of this project wouldn't change my opinion and essentially the contents of this review. However, however, however, even this sort of 'mystery', as well as Chris Jack's 'aesthetic' choices over the years and even in the specific case of 'In This Perfect Hell', testify in any case to a certain 'genius' of the Andy Warhol type which has always worked in the history of rock music and as such should never be underestimated.