Local Flavor

Due credit has to be given to Blues Control--for all that they've still only formally released one album plus some CD-Rs, the duo has enough of a sound already to expand upon it. Thus the rollicking funkabilly start to LOCAL FLAVOR, "Good Morning," with guest saxophone from Jesse Trbovich and trumpet from Kurt Vile, not to mention the dramatic piano stabs, as essential as the brisk drumming and mind-melting guitar parts. From there Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse continue to take their sound to intriguing locations over a short length of time (the album totals four songs at a little over half-an-hour). The moody, drowned piano flow of "Rest on Water"--energetic while fighting through murky depths--also features Trbovich's saxophone. "Tangier" returns to the core duo and a steady marching chug of an arrangement, plucked guitars melting into a steady upward-and-out swirl of dreamy keyboards and drones. "On Through the Night" concludes things not with a Def Leppard tribute --though that would be something to imagine--but with a swelling build of organ and guitar that's a rapturously dark crescendo. It then shifts to a slow drum punch and new keyboard melody that's more 1981 Factory than 1969 acid trip.