X-Impossibles
White Knuckle Ride
[Headhunter/Cargo]
Rating: 7.9
When people come together to fuel a shared passion, either a band or a cult
is formed. The X-Impossibles are five Georgians who have an awestruck love
for the grimy proto-punk of underground Detroit, circa 1968. Their passion
is to create and perform this loud, retro, visceral rock n' roll. So they
choose "band."
The showmanship is flaunted. Singer Tim Lumley sounds like a taller Glen
Danzig giving birth to the Reverend Horton Heat. Elvis' feral, lip-curled
singing style is practiced and deft. The wash, rinse and spin churn of Bartel
and Christian's twin Gibsons folds, spindles and mutilates eardrums. And
musically, the group pours gasoline on the bonfire. White Knuckle Ride
leaves the listener gasping for air. Hard, furious rock was never so primal
and elementary-- at least not in Generation Dot-Com.
"Fire" leads off with some motorcycle revving sounds, a la "Leader of the
Pack." Groan-worthy, to be sure, but suddenly Bo Diddley tears out a version
of "Police Truck" by the Dead Kennedys. Or so you'd swear in court. On the
follow-up jab, "Don't Tread," the Danzig impression Lumley's been cultivating
comes to fruition. Throbbing bass begins the song, with tweeter-rending power
chords tumbling into beat. A rip-it-up solo proudly wails, sloppy and ecstatic.
But the song's finest moments comes with the outro, a rallying cry for those
whose tattoos outnumber their fingers.
"Dead Horse" takes the Stooges and MC5 influences that, up to now, had merely
been hinted at, and welds them into a fun, furious blast of Detroit-style rock
like you haven't heard since the pansy-ass post-rock post-grads took the
T-bird away. By the second chorus, you've dropped what you're doing to
hand-clap away your pretentious conceptions about music.
By now, the X-Impossibles are clearly making their bid the saviors of fun, raw
rock n' roll. And at this point, the challenge becomes merely living up to
their own unreal standard they've set in just three songs. But eight tracks
later, the ride through punk-rockabillyland is over, and the evidence shows
that these four guys and one gal kept it up strong. And their encore-- a
cover of the Dead Boys' "What Love Is"-- is a live-take, one-off purist's
version, performed with a love and reverence that leaves little to be
desired.
Of course, the nitpicker in me finds the second half of the disc bogged down
in formula at times-- mostly during the repetitious, bipolarate intros to
each number. Sure, a handful of songs are less stellar, but we can let that
slide since each of the best six tracks pulls double duty. And when these
guys nail it, they satiate with bulging steroid-rock, overbuilt and bursting
at the seams, with titles like "Action Man," "Loaded," "Hot Wire." How can
you go wrong?
Listening to the X-Impossibles turns me into an unforgiving, cocky, adrenaline
addict. Rude. Selfish. So what do I ask of this frenetic quintet? Give me
tinnitus, for starters. I want it. Then, give me decibel-clause eviction
warnings and whale-bellied policemen waving "disturbing the peace" citations
threateningly in the air. Give me Iggy Pop to point at, so I scream right
into his guilty, weathered face: "This, you fucker, is where your roots
were." And finally, give me a wide berth and step out of the way. This band
is coming through.
-John Dark