Labels: Bad Afro
Review by: Alex Deller
Given an album sleeve that features not only silhouetted naked women but also a slick-looking American muscle car, as well as their name splashed in a font reminiscent of everyone from the Cramps to the Hellacopters, I thought I had this pegged. However, suspicions of high-velocity rock n’ roll of a Stooges bent remained strangely unconfirmed. Instead, the Defectors adopt an approach reminiscent of countless American bands back in the mid to late 60s who hacked up hits by the Yardbirds, the Kinks and the Stones to give birth to dirty, sleaze-filled anthems fleetingly bouncing across radio waves before fading into obscurity, only to be exhumed years later by labels like Crypt or Norton.
The result in this particular instance is a delightfully filler-free eleven tracks of thrusting, twanging guitars, chintzy Hammond organ and breathless, hiccuping vocals that evoke more through their caterwauling, bestial nature than the words themselves. Whilst shamelessly derivative and retro, when songs like “it’s gonna take some time” or “it’s you” dance from the speakers it’s nigh-on impossible to quell the urge to walk with a swagger and adopt an unconvincing sneer. Everything here straddles the “top-notch’ end of the musical barometer, and when they really get going the Defectors positively shine. Roughly four decades on from it’s point of inception, this style of music still has the ability to shake bones and woo listeners between stained sheets for sweaty, primal, three-minute aural romps. It may lack the raw, primitive edge of any number of bands prefixing their name with “The’ from times gone by or the knowing wit of Billy Childish and his many guises, but what the Defectors have created is a snappy, deliciously unwholesome blast of time-honoured garage scuzz.