Friday, May 20, 2011

That's Not A Face That's A Stain



White Drugs sent me a copy of their "Gold Magic" album about a year ago, though it didn't really sink in with me all that much. Luckily they also included a copy of their first CD, "Harlem", which I like a lot better. (They've also got a split 7" with H-O-F that sells on the AmRep web site for $20, which is pretty weird.) With a name like White Drugs and the fact that they're from Denton TX, I guess it'd be easy to expect this to fall within the trebly garage rock realm (see how that happens?), but cranked at their fullest-- like during the chorus for "Kleaning Kru"-- the guitar tone leans more towards what you'd find from The Men or on a Drunkdriver record. Here's my two favorite songs from the CD so you can figure it out for yourself.


White Drugs -

"Kleaning Kru"

"I Hate Your Face"











10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like these fellers, kinda make me think of The Chain Gang, which can't be a bad thing. Cheers

Brushback said...

Ha, Chain Gang! There's one I wouldn't have thought of.

Yeah, there's a bit of New York in their stuff.

Holly said...

Cool! I was expecting White *Denim*, & these guys are more to my taste.

Brushback said...

White Dog, White Beach, White Claw, White Cop, White Coast, White Hair, White Face, White Bones... the possibilities are endless

("blank", "dirty", "wet", and "burnt" can be used in place of white also)

Holly said...

Heh. True. You forget Hills (awesome) and House (not my thing).

But seriously - White Denim are from Austin. Harlem are also from Austin, and released a cd entitled Free Drugs. So you can see why White Drugs from Denton releasing a cd entitled Harlem has my head all awhirl. Esp. since White Drugs predates the the other 2 bands!

I guess I'll go listen to the Mountain Goats' "Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" ...

Brushback said...

That was the first thing that I thought of when I saw the White Drugs CD: "Funny, there's already a band from down there called Harlem"...

Kinda like this hardcore album I had when I was younger, "Toasterhead" by A Number of Things. Or was it "A Number of Things" by Toasterhead. Looking at the LP cover, you couldn't tell which was the album title and which was the band name.

Anonymous said...

Hi guys, and thanks for the review. I'm in White Drugs and just wanted to say that yeah, we were kinda surprised that Harlem named their album "Free Drugs" too. We got on a bill with them not long after the release and they never mentioned it when we met them...

We came up with the title Harlem because of the label White Drugs' band The Bronx, cause I thought that shit would be funny. I wanted to name Gold Magic "Staten Island" but no one else agreed . Thanks for the attention!

Brushback said...

We came up with the title Harlem because of band The Bronx on the record label White Drugs

That actually IS kinda funny...

An obscure reference that possibly only ten people will get is my favorite kind of joke

King Block said...

Hey man, the band was A Number of Things and the album was "Toasterhead" nice and obscure reference. A lot of people were confused by it.

Unknown said...

◆this guy