If Music Could Talk

Think if a Blues Master struck blind by whiskey wrote the book of Revelations. Think if Heaven was a farm In Arkansas with fields open wide, and Hell was a junkyard thick with the ghosts of Cadillac's and Pickup trucks where a cold wind always blows. Now listen to Rob Jungklas' Arkadelphia, and what you hear will make you a believer of possibilities. This haunting album is Blues cooked up like meth with Jungklas' gravel voice, a musical canvas that moves from spars to complicated, and lyrics strait from the journal of a drunk preacher wandering to face his demons alone. This is a journey in music with a rhythm heavy like feet on gravel roads in "Drunk Like Son House" and "Soul of Arkadelphia" and desperate in "Hell and Helena" and "The Holy Spirit" as if building to a mad pursuit. "Human Cannonball" and "Poker Face" offer reflective moments on this album amongst a lineup that conveys a frustration to understand something so big it threatens to crack the skull. This album is worth getting just for the experience of listening to it. You can hear Jungklas rip every word and note right from his gut and by the end you can feel a tear in your own soul. Rating: A.

It's only fitting that the cover of this album is a rust-orange tinted picture of someone dressed as a caveman standing in the middle of a 1960's suburban street (and perhaps even more revealingly, according to the liner notes it's actually a picture someone found in a gutter): This is some of the most scuzzily invigorating caveman-garage-rock I've heard in recent years. The closing rendition of Aerosmith's "Let The Music Do The Talking" (one of two cover tunes here, the other one being "King Kong" by.... Soupy Sales???) is also appropriate, as well as a good reminder that before all the power ballads Aerosmith themselves were back-to-basic riff rockers, though in The Konks hands it sounds a lot more like a Raw Power outtake. It's thrilling to hear how much this band can do with just the barest elements (and I do mean barest; they ain't kidding about the "cheap guitars and only two lousy drums" bit, and in "Move And Shake" they even do away with drums entirely and make due with only shakers and foot stomping for percussion). Though he doesn't exhibit much of a vocal range, vocalist/drummer Kurt posesses a truly great shriek in the tradition of Iggy Pop or Mark Arm, and simultaneously manages to at least do more with two drums than Meg White does with a full set, and the guitar playing is pure primitive fury. This music is a lot more about attitude and the cheap thrills of noisy distortion and manic screaming than songwriting (what else do you expect from a band who have two entirely different songs called "Outta My Mind" and "Out Of My Mind"?), but they have that certain knack for basic but memorable riffs that tends to make or break bands of this stripe. This album's already brief 33 minutes tends to fly right by; there's nary a pause between tracks, and only the surprisingly mellow, almost delta-blues-stomp of "Honey" allows the listener to take anything even close to a breather. However, that's all the more reason to hit the play button again and listen to the whole thing one more time.

Purple Hayes wrote:Should have sold a shitload more than it did, released in september '78 co-produced by Conny Plank..If you like Bowie's Low, you'll like this...