Skip to main content

Hard workin', hard rockin' - White Mystery, baby!

Image
(Steven J Wilson)
At the ripe old age of thirty-two, Chi-town's Miss Alex White has been banging out the rock tunes since she was a teenager. I first encountered her in 2005 with the release of her Miss Alex White and the Red Orchestra album. I reviewed it, for the Kansas City Star, I think. I liked it. It was noisy – brash and bruising, but with a marination in soul music that was refreshing for a bratty kid. Her guitar playing was confident, within its limited range. You know, like Johnny Ramone or somebody. She was cool. And as a singer she already hinted at something special. She was raw, and powerful, but with a touch of sweet, sweet soul.


In 2008 (or thereabouts) she formed a duo with her younger brother Francis Scott Key White. Using the name of a Fleer bubble gum flavor, White Mystery, the sibling ensemble was launched. Since 2010 they’ve released an album in April of every year. Each one has some good tunes, each one has some klunkers. The sibs tour relentlessly and their records are essentially consecutive souvenirs – merch table fodder, for those who want more after seeing them live, not unlike the way bands in the Sixties cranked out albums every eight months to capitalize on an endless succession of live dates. 

Live, White Mystery is a high energy outfit, flailing with flying ginger hair, thrift store rock star wardrobe, all projected with flair and humor. F.Y. M.S. (uh, Fuck Your Mouth Shut) is 2017's edition of White Mystery, and a final representation of what they are all about. 

 Alex’s guitar sounds are well dialed. She enjoys a crunchy Who-Slade-Mott power chord style or a janglier, sometimes arpeggiated sound closer to a cross between Love and the Searchers-side of the Ramones. She shifts gears between the two often; “Bad Neptune” shows her jangle-pop side, sweet and scruffy; while “F.Y.M.S.” is butt-rock, something akin to what the Runaways might have done if they were given the luxury of being foulmouthed. 
Alex also treads into girl-group territory with “Stand It,” replete with call and response vocals and a “hit me and it felt like a kiss” sort of theme. “Full of Light” is a tuneful garage-rocker that wouldn’t sound out of place on fellow Chicagoan Liz Phair’s Exile on Guyville. So, you get the picture – White Mystery records are grab bags of rock ’n’ roll party favors. 

 This music don’t aim for high art, it’s entertainment, Alex knows how to make the best use of her talents and brother Francis is an explosive, uninhibited drummer. He drops a beat here and there, but never blushes, and comes back thrashing as if to say “I meant to do that.” It’s music to jump about to, music to bang your head to, sweet to - party music for one, two, or a crowd. On F.Y.M.S. , White Mystery isn’t so mysterious. What you see (and hear) is what you get, two kids from Chicago having one fun, wild ass time playing rock ’n’ roll. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

The people have spoken.

Better Ed than Dead

(Steven J Wilson)
Ed Sheeran - He looks like Van Morrison, kinda, huh? Check the tats.   Ed Sheeran is the highest paid entertainer on the planet. I think. I don’t know. They say he’s worth 65 million. Anyway, I read that somewhere. God knows he travels light and doesn’t have to share that dough with an orchestra or anything. I saw Ed once. At least that I’m aware of. He opened for the Rolling Stones in 2015 (or was it 16?) at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Just me and several thousand of my closest friends. He came out with a guitar in front of that throng and mesmerized the crowd. Okay, not really. Some kids seemed to like him. Old people, eighty percent of the attendees, treated him as a curiosity or mild irritant, not uncommon for a warmup act served up before the Stones’ Lions and Christians, bread and circuses exhibition. Later, he sang “Beast of Burden” with Mick. He was better than Dave Matthews. I see his ruddy little mug and tousled ginger top here and there in the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Necks are from Australia. They are improvisors.

(Steven J Wilson)
The new release by the Necks was reviewed recently in Pitchfork. 755 bloody words and other than some vague references to genre, mention of label mates, there’s one reference of a musical nature - to the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Sorta. The rest of it is a lot of bubble and squeak about cascades or echoes or some such shit.   Pitchfork gives me gas. It’s a handy reference because they do review a lot of releases, but whatever critical paradigm they have is dominated and subverted by a lot of psycho-babble and allusion to extraneous nonsense.   So, down to brass tacks. Whatever else the Necks may be, they are a jazz ensemble, a trio. Drummer Tony Buck, bassist Lloyd Swanton and keyboardist Chris Abrahams are Aussies who’ve performed together since the Eighties. I don’t pretend to know their entire history, but their last two recordings have been compelling sets of group improvisation. Recordings I discovered in part thanks to the British online jo...
Post a Comment
Read more

A snapshot of Southern Racism, part 1

(Steven J Wilson)
I thought I had taken a snap of the Sumner Drug Store. Apparently, I was a sad-ass photo-documentarian. So for graphic relief, please enjoy this photo of the dog who first assailed and then greeted me at Robert Johnson's gravesite on Money Road, a few miles outside of Greenwood, Mississippi.  Tallahatchie County is basically a food desert. Let’s say you’re traveling and you want a can of mixed nuts to nibble on, something halfway healthy. In the small towns and rural areas of the Mississippi Delta you can’t find a can of mixed nuts to save your life. So, I was relegated to buying the little one- or two-ounce pouch numbers they sell in convenience stores. Anyway, I was visiting Sumner, one of the county seats, home to the courthouse where the animals who killed and mutilated Emmett Till were found not guilty by a jury of their all-white peers. My last time in town I had visited the Till Memory Project. I’d gotten a tour, plus a lot of wisdom from a fellow named Benjamin...
Post a Comment
Read more