Sweet Rot -- Drug Fiend

Sweet Rot
Drug Fiend
Square Wave, 2007

Although Sweet Rot may not bowl anyone over with their relatively generic brand of lo-fi garage punk, their Drug Fiend EP is nevertheless worth a few spins on the old turntable. Indeed, while this Orange County outfit's sound is a largely predictable admixture of raw vocals and fuzzy guitars with rockabilly and surf rock accents, the band's brilliant incorporation of well-placed, bizarrely ghoulish backing vocals (a feature especially effective on the EP's closing track) really makes this disk stand out from the rapidly-expanding pile of indistinguishable lo-fi recordings littering your neighborhood record shop.

Highlight:

Track 3. "Wouldn't You Like To Know (What I Did With Your Mom)?" This is what it would sound like if a bunch of punk kids got stoned and decided to hire a two-bit (and perhaps lobotomized) Elvis impersonator to try and imitate Lux Interior and Dave Vanian. Somehow, it works magnificently.

Sobriquet Grade: 79 (C+).

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