Review: Guilty Pleasures - Summer Strange
I won’t speculate on why Guilty Pleasures never released their awesome catchy garage punk tour de force back when it was recorded by the legendary Jim Diamond (of Dirtbombs and White Stripes producing fame) in Detroit during the summer of 2000. The important fact is that Dusty Medical Records came to the rescue and finally released what may be the scene’s lost classic. The Guilty Pleasures’ Summer Strange ranks right up there with the Oblivians’ Soul Food and The Mummies Play Their Own Records… yes it’s that good.
From the opening drum beats and bouncy, fast guitar lines of “Sum Thin Wyld”, you know you won’t be able to lift the needle off Summer Strange for quite some time. “Stray Ahead”, “Ark 40”, and pretty much every other song just plow ahead with that Supercharger/Rip Off Records manic trash-punk aesthetic, rocking harder than any garage or punk band since the Stooges or the Dead Boys. “Trash Bag” is a New York Dolls via the Pagans punk riot waiting to happen. The title track is another speedball killer of a song that reminds me of the Revelators and the Catholic Boys (other wild, unhinged, mostly forgotten Midwestern punk bands from a decade ago).
If you want to circle around and try to pinpoint what the Guilty Pleasures sound like, just look at the other bands they played with in the late nineties—the Dirtbombs, Reatards and the Clone Defects, amongst the other usual suspects at Hozac’s Blackout Fest. In fact, they would’ve fit right in at Crypt, In the Red or Sympathy For the Record Industry. Guilty Pleasures drew from the snarl of early punk, the rock ‘n’ roll vibe of early garage bands covering Chuck Berry songs, the noisy garage skronk that many bands like the Chrome Cranks and the Gories honed in on, and the balls-out high octane punk that the Makers and New Bomb Turks were destroying crowds with at the time.
The Guilty Pleasures pretty much defined Midwestern punk rock for a whole lotta us kids, and you ought to do yourself a favor and check out Summer Strange now.
4 Notes/ Hide
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