The Electric Shakes - Electrohypnosis album review

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.