Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts

Murder City Devils: Spencer Moody (vocals); Dann Gallucci (guitar, organ); Nate Manny (guitar, bass); Derek Fudesco (bass, organ); Coady Willis (drums).
Murder City Devils: Spencer Moody (vocals); Dann Gallucci (guitar, organ); Nate Manny (guitar, bass guitar); Derek Fudesko (organ, bass guitar); Coady Willis (drums).
The four-wheel-drive garage punk made by Seattle's Murder City Devils started to reveal an old-fashioned streak on their second album. Still beefy to the point of being hardcore, the songs nonetheless also took on the dusty patina of NUGGETS-era rockers like Question Mark & the Mysterians or shaggy pre-punks like the New York Dolls. For instance, the queasy Munsters-theme organ of "18 Wheels" and "Ready for More" positions them as vaguely creepy undead trucker types without being explicitly horror rock. Elsewhere, straight-ahead rockers like "Left Hand Right Hand" and "Hey Sailor" go for the jugular with a rusty buzzsaw, and the album closer, "Every Shitty Thing," staggers around after a night of heavy boozing. Too heavy to fit in with the garage rock revival and too retro for hardcore, the Devils were essentially their own genre at the time of this album's recording.