Total Magique
Label: Dare to Care
Length: LP
Rated: NONE
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Total Magique
Though wolf sightings are commonplace nowadays in music, the stuff this Montreal trio stomps out is anything but ho-hum. It’s an outright party that pumps in spasms of bop and thrash. Essentially, they’ve taken Krautrock, slid the stick out of its ass, synthed it up and punked it out. In so doing, they’ve unleashed a dance-floor animal that’s equal parts ecstatic and menacing. Though thick smears of new wave are flaunted, the insistent keyboards that whir and throb throughout the record are just as grainy as the grating guitars and digging bass lines, thereby maintaining a bottom-heavy garage-rock language. “Teenage, Bats & Anthropology” is a ’70s punk rock anthem pushed through a synthesizer, like a collision of Johnny Thunders and the Sounds. It’s an electrifying dose of full-tilt, overdriven fun.
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2007.