I love the fact that Leathers have fallen into a (seemingly at least) fairly simple (though not simplistic) sound and managed to get so much mileage out of it. And that is no way a criticism; in fact, it is the ultimate compliment. That they can take a guitar-and-drums, occasionally keyboard-infused, garage-punk rock ‘n’ soul sound and rearrange those elements into not only so many songs, but songs that all have their own personality, is a testament to their songwriting and arrangement skills. We all know that less is more…so it follows that this much less is so much more…natch!
Leathers are also a music writer’s dream, their music evoking all sorts of unexpected reference points, musical juxtapositions, compound wordage and strange, made-up turns of phrase and Plantano Macho (which is both the Latin name for a type of banana (hence the cover art) and a 90’s Uruguayan funk band) is no exception. Unless you are one of those music writers who dump the press release into an AI platform and consider the resulting vague verbiage music journalism…it’s the journey, not the destination, man!)
Do your job properly, and you get to describe songs like the opening salvo, ‘Whiplash’, as James Brown leading a conga line through a Television gig at CBGB’s in 1977. You get to talk about ‘Morning, Noon and Night’ in terms of punk boiled down to the essential 10% – all the soul and none of the spitting. You can mention ‘Eye Contact’ as being the sound of Kid Congo Powers leading a party band through one last punky-funky-herky-jerky-sass ‘n’ soul voodoo ritual before the end of the world. And you can talk about ‘Smokin’ Hot’ sounding like a four-legged groove machine built from the beating heart of The Birthday Party’s visceral blues.
You wouldn’t get that with AI’s weasel words.
Eight great songs where the elegance of simplicity is warped into the excess of early rock ‘n’ roll…and not just any rock ‘n’ roll, rock ‘n’ roll that has been boiling in a Chicago basement for 60 years, finally coming up for air – wild-eyed, willfully raged, straight-to-the-point, groovy as fuck, frenzied, forthright and fun!
If a band makes you want to dance to them, write about them, go on a drinking spree with them and start a fight in their honour, then they must be doing something pretty amazing.
PS: They are!
PPS: Parenthesis rule. (Ok!)
