Pity poor Matador Records. A mere seven or eight years ago, Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi's New York label was the undisputed king of the alternative rock world, sporting a roster full of just-off-the-mainstream-radar luminaries like Pavement, Liz Phair, and Guided by Voices. But since then, Matador's thoroughbreds have all weakened, be it from a) recording silence after marriage/childbirth/divorce, b) loss of uniqueness from courting radio, or c) splintering into less compelling solo entities. Were it not for lucrative back catalog sales and a pack of Scottish nancy-boys, Matador would surely be frolicking in record label heaven with IRS and Twin/Tone.

Jon Spencer and his Blues Explosion weren't quite in the upper echelon of the above artists, but they were sufficiently high profile to appear in Rolling Stone and on 120 Minutes back in those headier mid-nineties. At their peak, JSBX straddled the line between novelty act and early-rock throwback by whitening up the blues behind Spencer's 'Elvis with Tourette's Syndrome' vocals. It was an entertaining gimmick, albeit one with a short shelf life, and it was already starting to fizzle by the time of 1995's Now I Got Worry. Perhaps recognizing this, the band experimented with Dan the Automator and Alec Empire for the Acme and Xtra-Acme albums, to uniformly bland results.

In response to those failures, Spencer & Co. have returned to the basics for Plastic Fang: two guitars, a bag full of riffs, and frequent interjections of "Blues Explosion!" Never mind the tiny fact that the band's gimmick, if tired in the mid-nineties, is downright comatose these days. Nobody seems to have informed JSBX that the world's music warehouse has become overstocked on pale-faced blues, with the White Stripes, etc. improving the sound by keeping things quick and raw while dispensing with the ironic wink.

Or perhaps the Blues Explosion is aware of the garage revival, and looking to claim some kind of Neil Young-esque patriarchal crown. If so, the dozen tracks of Plastic Fang fail miserably, giving off the appearance of a 35 year-old accountant hanging around the old frat house on Homecoming weekend. From the limp rockabilly of first single "She Said" to the faux-live party-stomper "Hold On," the Blues Explosion never venture outside of territory they haven't already beaten to death, producing hollow echoes of their stronger early days.

Don't fault Russell Simins, whose Grade-A drumming on "Money Rock N' Roll" and "The Midnight Creep" is comparable to putting a Corvette engine in a Ford Focus. No, blame should be firmly thrown towards bandleader Spencer, whose drawling soul man act has shifted from tongue-in-cheek egotism to outright cartoon. Punctuating verses with yells of "Blues Explosion!" and "Rock and roll!" might have amused me when I was 15, but in an age where Jay-Z self-promotes seventeen different aliases over the course of an album, Spencer sounds just plain out-of-touch. Given that Plastic Fang lyrically seems to be a loose concept album casting Spencer as a werewolf... well, that really doesn't even require further comment.

The dual guitar interplay of Spencer and Judah Bauer remains spottily potent, as on "Over and Over," but usually loses its charm by the one-minute point of the song. Had JSBX kept things short and poorly recorded, a stronger case could probably have been made for salvaging this project. But tracks tend to stretch out over four lifelessly produced minutes so that Spencer can make tired Frampton and James Brown references, coasting along with a fraction of the energetic kick they used to have. It's ironic, and a little bit sad, to see a band whose original goal was to steer the music world back towards Marquee Club-era Stones grow as stodgy and irrelevant as Steel Wheels-era Stones.

So while JSBX hasn't formally announced Plastic Fang as their farewell album, this writer's going to go ahead and pronounce them officially deceased (hopefully tricking them into retiring). In true series finale style, it's time to fire up Green Day's "Time of Your Life" and run the slo-mo highlight reel: the brilliant Aerosmith/Run DMC sendup video for "Flavor," that other video where John C. Reilly played Simins, the collaborations with R.L. Burnside and Rufus Thomas, and what the hell, Spencer's wife Cristina Martinez running around in a bra and miniskirt. Farewell, Blues Explosion... we knew ye too well.

-Rob Mitchum, April 18th, 2002