A different tier of garage rock

When they formed in 2006, The Coathangers could, as the story goes, barely play their instruments. Eight years later, though they may know how to play a bit better, they have lost none of their initial shoddy magnetism. These are garage punk tracks that clang, stumble, and stutter along, and each sounds as if it was written in about as long as it takes to listen to. In some contexts this can be taken as an insult, but here, I mean it as high praise, with each song exuding a grime and cool swagger that would ruined completely had anything been fussed over. The shouting female vocals are intended as a show of force more than they are intended to convey any real musicality, and the guitar/bass lines swerve in and out of lockstep with the basic chord progressions, at times going for the simple powerchord, while at others developing wiry riffs that snake all around the track. Though they can let loose with the best in the scene, where The Coathangers really excel is in their intuition to let a track burn and seethe, lurking for the majority of the runtime following jerky post-punk rhythms and only occasionally coming out of the grass to bite you square on the ass, a quality exemplified perfectly on the tracks “Shut Up‰” and “Dead Battery‰Û. For all their haphazardness, there isn‰’t a poorly written song on the entirety of Suck My Shirt, and while The Coathangers hardly reinvent the wheel, there are only a handful of names making garage rock of this caliber.

RIYL: White Lung, Gang of Four, The Black Lips, King Tuff
Recommended Tracks: 1, 2, 4, 8