Labels: Troubleman
Review by: Alex Deller
The idea of Orchid and Red Scare folks following their rock n`roll urges for some MC5 / Stooges action is either enough to lure you in wholesale or set your teeth uncomfortably on edge and, having been suckered into stuffing dollar bills into an envelope for this thing, I kinda wish I`d been in the latter camp from the off.
Rather than any kind of garage rock goodness, however, `Are You Down` instead consists of ten songs sounding like a weak-ass Shotmaker listlessly fondling the Rye Coalition, with neither the bulbous grooves of the former or the impiudent swagger of the latter. Mildly distorted jangly-to-jagged guitars are topped by an almost-urgent squawk that`s infused with sex and irreverant lyrics that touch upon art, literature and revolutionary politics, namedropping the likes of Anais Nin, Karl Marx and James Brown as part of a sloganeering “˜manifesto’ that doesn`t so much hint at the likes of the MC5 and the Nation Of Ulysses as crib from them wholesale whilst failing to capture even a snippet of either bands` guts, gusto or invention. Disappointing all round, really.