TiJUANA HERCULES :: Mudslog ep

@fB // dot com // bandcamp // 
Tijuana Hercules has a new six song Ep out that bears the rich results of being able to sublet a studio last summer. 

With Mudslod they've scored a terrific, sweeping piece of work that keeps one workboot in the mud, a bowling pencil nub and a novel in it's back pocket, a guitar string around it's wrist, a valise containing who knows what, a diamond pinky ring, and a sharp, bent old hat. It's a brilliant trip. Like headphones and the visualizer set to On kind of brilliant trip. 

Tj's sound is a taut-meandering of genres and vibes, cinematic yet often North Mississippi trance-inducing in its groovy simplicity. Led by reformed Georgian John Forbes, that's how Chicago's Tijuana Hercules (TJ) rolls. They know and show their roots in blues, soul, country, and rock action, but they take them outside...outside of genres, and they flex 'em and rub 'em down. They can make you feel good, baby. TJ is listenin'.

The drummer's chooglin' down the line, saxes, trumpets, guitars chug and holler, dub-like whispers and haunting sampled voices cruise the hat racks, and Forbes punches his band's tickets. 

The band is one-hand-hangin' on to the streamlined, rattle-trap house side of The Forbes Southern Drummer&Bass Player's train, while wailing with the other hand. Movin' it. Doin' it. 

Here's what I said last time I posted about TJ, and I stand by it. They're a hell of an outfit:

 "Tijuana Hercules is led by a primatavist Georgian named John Forbes who acts as Master of Ceremonies, singer, cartoonist, twelve-string guitarist, songster and testifier. Forbes straps himself with anywhere from one to fourteen players playing horns, keys, sometimes a couple drummers, and most anything else they can get ahold of to wail on. It's one hell of a sound. Free and primal, dirty blues-based, it's pure bottled smokey amber and the criminal sin of knowing the one your with. It's the soulful Romweberian sound of Hasil's country hunchin'. It's The Stooges covering early Tom Waits, all the while blasting thru with a sometimes shamboling, sometimes Don Garlits vs Shirley Cha-Cha Muldowney lowered and louvered rat rod of souped-up fully-blown custom rock and blues with rusted chrome sidepipes."

I'll say it again, this is another band that's gonna be "discovered" in twenty years, and people will be kicking their own selves for not digging it now. Get in on the ground floor, kid. 

Future roots music of the past, done today.