The Electric Shakes - Electrohypnosis album review

Fuzzy, bluesy Bournemouth trio’s stout second.

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Cover art for The Electric Shakes - Electrohypnosis album

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The word ‘electric’ has a faintly kitsch ring to it these days, but that makes it all the more apposite for this three-piece from Dorset, who rustle up a fuzzy, hairy, sweaty racket redolent of an age when you could still get electrocuted by your amplifier. It’s no stylised retro-fest worshipping the dust in the valves, though, as tracks such as In The Blood and Rats skilfully channel QOTSA’s druggy urgency and minor-chord melodic anxiety, and the former’s fuzz-caked guitar motif is instant earworm material. Throughout, though, there’s a satisfyingly organic garage rumble to a sound that keeps on gut-punching on the Stoogesgo-psychobilly stomp of Shot Me Down and the MC5-ish thunder-groove of Magpie.

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.