“Heroic energy and creativity,” SEATTLE STRANGER

Posted Sunday, November 17th, 2013 at 4:20 am

(Sunset) It takes an intangible something—spirit, fieriness, recklessness, bravado—to thrive as a garage-rock band in the 21st century. The genre’s been around for nearly 50 years, so it requires heroic energy and creativity to make it sound interesting at this late date. Chicago’s White Mystery—redheaded dynamos Miss Alex White and Francis Scott Key White—harness those intangibles and write catchy, gnarly tunes that don’t reek of Nuggets box sets or graying pudding-bowl haircuts. The duo’s newest album, Telepathic, actually possesses more Pussy Galore/Blues Explosion–like DNA in its buzz-and-howl attack than it does the Seeds or the Standells. However the hell they’re managing to accomplish it, White Mystery have thosespecial ingredients that make their garage rock not sound museum-y.With Fox and the Law, the Mad Caps.