Dan Melchiors Broke Revue - Bitterness, Spite, Rage and Scorn

by Cara Ross

published: 14 / 11 / 2002

Dan Melchiors Broke Revue - Bitterness, Spite, Rage and Scorn

Label: In the Red Records
Format: CD

Excellent second release on the In the Red label from long-serving rockers, which manages to "take a completely new approach to this whole garage meets R&B" scene

Review

Love this band and love this album. It easily sneaks onto my Top Ten for this year. They have a live show that is NOT TO BE MISSED, so I was pretty excited when this album came down the pipe and made it’s way into my ever-lovin’ arms. I stand hard and fast behind my belief that you could blindfold yourself over the 'In the Red' records catalogue of artists, and blindly pick any album, and still not be disappointed. In fact, you’re more likely to be thrilled with bands like the Deadly Snakes, the Dirtbombs, Reigning Sound, the Now Time Delegation, not to mention stalwarts like Andre Williams (who’s tag line was always: “makes James Brown look like a pussy...”). Anyway, I could go on.... Melchior & Co. : Bruno Meyrick Jones (lead/rhythm), Brad Truax(bass) and Greg Anderson (drums/percussion) manage to take a completely new approach (yet completely old, in reality) to thewhole garage meets R&B, meets folk horror mess that other people seem to be cranking out lately, and getting all wrong, and turn into something that actually seems somehow fresh on this tired old re-hashed poseur garage-rock scene. One more studded bracelet and skinny tie and I was about to go over the edge. Melchior has collaborated with Billy Childish (UK garage guru from the Headcoats), and more recently with Holly Golightly (thee Headcoatees). Melchior understands what the whole garage-punk-blues thing is actually about, and it’s not, I repeat NOT about the Vines, and making crazy rock n’ roll faces. What is that package all about,really, when it didn’t require any history to get there? Anyway, my point is that he’s got a pretty decent musical resume. Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue plays an awesome fuzzed out swamp rock that I haven’t heard new in some time now. 'Bitterness, Spite, Rage & Scorn' is reminiscent to me of those 1950s blues gems you somehow manage to find at a record convention or at a great garage sale completely by mistake. You dust it off and want to dash to the cutlery drawer for a pair of spoons to play along with it. But apart from all this, it’s his voice that makes this endeavour a revamped and updated John Lee Hooker. John Lee Hooker was suddenly introduced to Mark E. Smith from the Fall in the steaming hot summer of New York in 1965, and Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue was born. That’s as apt a description as I can come up with. In a time of over-hyped garage rock and over-blown pop music the world needs a soon to be folk hero like Dan Melchior to remind us of why music is written and performed in the first place.

Track Listing:-

1 Hungry Ghost
2 You're My Wife
3 Black Light
4 Me And JG Ballard
5 Semi Famous People
6 Ladies Underwear And Airline Socks
7 Gatecrasher
8 Out Of The Swamp
9 Inside Out Man
10 The Cruel Pang Of Beauty
11 Suburbia
12 Speck Of Grime
13 In Negative
14 Beast Of The Field