On
"Dirty Juice," the opening track from
Big Head Todd & the Monsters'
Crimes of Passion, one has to do a double-take to make sure it's not a
ZZ Top album in the player. This happens in two other places on the set as well:
"Conquistador" and
"Love Transmission." No, this is not a good thing, but there is plenty of good news as well. The other eight cuts here are among the most ambitious and beautiful that
Todd Park Mohr and company have ever put to tape. Shot through the album are the beautifully woven acoustic and electric guitars, the subtle, synthesized ambiences and rhythms, and the organic juxtaposed with the
electronic on tracks like the streetwise, shuffling, Caribbean-kissed strut of
"Beauty Queen"; the sci-fi
country music that emanates from
"Drought of 2013"; the shimmering
soul of
"Angela Dangerlove"; the driving, off-kilter
funk-
blues of
"Come On"; the wispy, late-night folksy
lounge groove of
"Imaginary Ships"; the paranoid, post-
Boz Scaggs R&B of
"ICU in Everything"; the wispy, haunting, elegiac
rock of
"Lost Child Astronaut," and the drifting, lilting, poignantly wrought
folk song that is
"Peacemaker's Blues." In all,
Crimes is a very strong record and features three tracks that seem more a nod to the ghosts of the
boogie-
jam band that was
Big Head Todd, rather than having much to do with the cats who laid the other tracks down here. This album gives up its secrets slowly, but the payoff is big despite the large and cloying
rock & roll setbacks. [
Crimes of Passion is also available as a "DualDisc" release with a bonus DVD.] ~ Thom Jurek
