Led by former Girls Against Boy members Scott McCloud and Johnny Temple, New Wet Kojak is like some mad bar band intent on reliving all matter of film noir and gangster films in the scope of a brief CD.
The music is alternately dark and comic, with a morose luster that is quite intoxicating. Saxophones blurt romantically, drums quake and crack with tons of echo, slide guitars careen luxuriously, and vocals go all foggy and mad as if delivered through a megaphone. Kind of like Morphine or even early Captain Beefheart, NWK pump with rock 'n' roll fervor and hoary blues fire.
Rolling bass thunder and clamoring drums imbue "Bad Blood" with a catastrophic feeling, especially when sound effects imitate skin peeling and walls melting. "Auto-E" is gentle by contrast, a queasy nocturnal jaunt through the mind of a demented urban traveler. "I Wanna See What's Up With When You Move" begins like a country rock ditty then turns macabre with haunted willows sounds. Like a nightmare scene from a '50s social drama, Do Things is deliciously dark.
All recordings courtesy of Beggars Banquet. All songs written by New Wet Kojak, S. McCloud, J. Temple; courtesy of Copyright Control/EMI Blackwood Music, Inc./Action Collar Music Inc. (BMI).
