Jacuzzi Boys

Outside of a smattering of EPs and singles, it’s been just shy of ten years since Jacuzzi Boys have graced us with a new record. The hole in our collective hearts gets mended this month with Too Cold To Tango, an album that refines the band’s history with power pop and scuffed garage-punk to peel back the label on a new era. For TCTT, the band traveled to the raw nerve of rock, turning wheels towards Memphis and setting up shop at Sam Phillips Recording Studio. The studio helped shape records from The Cramps, Alex Chilton, and John Prine, not to mention a host of your favorite 60s slingers. The band draws from the the fumes in the room to wrangle the wrinkles on Too Cold To Tango. Their last record left the listener plastered to the walls with volume and a perfect plasticity; a power pop snap that found the band at their most maximalist. For the follow-up, they scuff up the veneer a touch and pipe in a bit of atmosphere to the room.

It splits the difference between their home hewn early works and the towering textures of the early Mag Mag days. The band threads a tweediness into the seams of the new record, taking a measured step back from the brink to create something that feels cut from classic cloth. Handclaps spar with glam hooks that have been dragged through the mud a touch. They don’t quite tap into the country roots of the environment, but there’s a woodsiness to the record, a back porch jangled jam that’s brought to life between the spools. To the band’s credit, they could have easily copy and pasted the sparkle of Ping Pong, crafting a bigger, louder cousin to their earlier creation. Instead, they’ve succeeded in creating an album that doesn’t bite from the beginning, but wraps tightly around the listener, coiling its charms like a constrictor over time.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.