Album Review: Les Blanks – Shoot the Horse

Release Date: 5.20.08

Label: Self-released

By Travis Woods

A clattering, caterwauling howl of L.A. blues as refracted through a battered prism of the Stooges’ sludge-punk bloodbaths and indie-rock’s wounded, smirking ache, Les Blanks’ Shoot the Horse continues the band’s (formally Muso) exploration into the lunar pockmarks of protopunk’s damaged landscape, but with a sense of freedom and exploration atypical to the genre—they sound just as comfortable on the ludicrously catchy, L.A.-based beerhall piano jaunt, “La Reina,” as they do on the snarled gnash and rend of “That Heart Attack”’s exposed-nerve wail.

This is due to Les Blanks’ ability to build upon their influences rather than be subsumed by them—the band opens and unfurls their sound here, with the off-kilter rhythms of “The First Third”’s jittery swagger sharing space with the menacing, piano-laced sway of “Honest John,” while “Well Rehearsed Last Words” is a humid, sweaty slowburn that closes the album with an urgency that is simultaneously wistful and loopy, urgent and unselfconscious. Les Blanks’ ability to seamlessly blend this array of disparate sounds is their own reward; Shoot the Horses is ours.

May 20, 2008 | Filed Under Album Reviews 

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