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The scene is this: the corridors of any hospital, you’re alone waiting for news. The relatives are still on their way, you arrived first: you're there and you wait. You distract yourself by observing the coterie that shares your same spaces out of necessity: there’s a former soccer player who brought his son for an X-ray (broken foot?) and you think: hey, he seems nice, not even pretentious. There’s a crowd of people in front of the pediatric intensive care unit. You find out they’re there for a kid who had a scooter accident: it's serious. They cry, look at each other bewildered, you can read the shock in their eyes. You think: damn, I feel like crying. Finally, your family arrives, and you spend the rest of the time together.
Later on, you're outside in the parking lot, saying goodbye to your family, making plans for the next day. You get in the car and take a long breath: then you think that music is ready once again to save your ass, to make your day go a bit better. You recently bought the album by Two Bit Dezperados released on Jeet Kune (a small garage lo-fi label, a guarantee). You got to know them months earlier through that 7" gem released by the folks at Shit Music For Shit People (another guarantee).
Well, you pop it into the player and you are immediately swept away by an uncontrollable energy that mixes garage pop, jingle jangle guitars, blues, country, dirty rock'n'roll, catchy parara-papa-pa chants, crystalline melodies, a healthy lo-fi attitude. Simply the best of the best. What amazes you about this work is that it feels like a damn greatest hits: there isn’t a dull moment, a filler, nothing like that.
Instead, there are 11 tracks each more focused than the previous, starting with the hyperactive Mexi Com Ela, passing through the low-fidelity pop reminiscent of 60s beaches of Ballare e Suonare Con Te (our guys are a bit Portuguese and a bit Italian, but most of the tracks are sung in English). You listen to Eu Prefiro and think how long it’s been since such a sunny chorus and such a joyously garage frenzy knocked you down. I Won’t Stay is a country blues with a panty-dropping chorus and a psychedelic tail to die for, Alive/Dead is a gut-shaking stomp that if it weren't sung by the lovely Angela Monteiro, you’d say it's played exactly by the Oblivians. Everything ends with the finger-tipping poetry of Lucifer Matches, which after so much joy almost makes a tear trickle down.
The Two Bit Dezperados know how to play catchy and at the same time viscerally rock'n'roll; they are filthy and sweet at the same time. They’re one of the best things to come out lately.
Let yourselves be saved.
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