WHITE MYSTERY

For: Bare Wires, No Bunny, Cramps, Mudhoney

Byline: Drink the copper Kool-Aid dude

Alex and Francis White are siblings. Alex and Francis White play loud 60’s steezy fuzz rock. Alex and Francis White both have manes of kinky red hair (insert a doofy White Stripes joke if you must). I initially thought their name was “White History” (insert sketchy joke about reverse racism) when I saw ’em opening for ATL’s Coathangers this past Sunday, but damn this ginger duo does the damn thing rah rah right.

Stripped down garage rock n’ roll with loose, sideways riffing and thundering drums, it’s the kind of hot mess you’ve really got to see to believe…and I did! Francis is a gangly copper-haired monster who plays a small-ish kit (kinda resembles a toy kit next to him) and hits those things with enough unbridled chutzpah to skip our third rock off its axis, while Alex strangles a red Rickenbacker (Townsend style) and yelps to it like the unholy ghost of Joplin-via-Poison-Ivy. They both swim about in their aural stew, completely lost in their own psyche-sonic cherry red Kool-Aid brew, excorcizing their own demons through a blitzkrieg barrage of coded bloodshot glances, wayward noggin-slams and deft downstrokes. Do you like rock n’ roll, you pansy?

The tape’s a combo of hand picked favorites from their two albums thus far (a self titled platter of 14 cuts that was recorded in an abandoned steel meel in Chicago’s industrial district and Blood and Venom). While I can’t vouch for most “greatest hits” albums (save for Madonna‘s Immaculate Collection), I’m gonna chalk this one up to perfection since it caused me to immediately get on the ‘net and blow my Momma’s birthday cash on picking up their back catalog.

“Switch it Off” is like a distorted version of The Supremes, gallopping bare-knuckle gospel freak-out, “White Mystery” bubbles like the inner lining of Dave Wynorf‘s ballsack (“Ozium” redux ya heard?) and “Take a Walk” snakes around itself like a shambling disease, only placated by the intermittent cymbal crashes ‘neath its squallid howling.

So what exactly is the “white mystery?” Someone told me it’s because they’ve got twelve other siblings and they’re the only ones with red hair. (Insert Shawn White/Doppleganger joke here). I think it’s just because they manage to channel the Nuggets Comp, turned up to eleven….red hair. Yeah. (I’m running out of jokes).

-Dylan Chadwick