The Cramps: Fiends Of Dope Island : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Now that Lux Interior and Ivy Rorschach's strictly retro sound as performed by the current wave of garage rockers is literally all the rage, the Cramps still hold one card those other bands don't: Outrageousness. Twenty-five years on, the Cramps have managed to take their voodoo bash and tiki trash thing into the outer limits without messing too much with the back-to-basics sound they forged in punk rock days. They don't wanna grow, and they haven't. Ivy's guitar still cranks out surf-style squeaks and squawks, and Lux is still paying heed to the tradition that the devil made rock & roll. He reels off the album's namesake song, "Dopefiend Boogie," with a desperation not heard since Johnny Thunders. There's a psycho-drama deluxe in the stompin' "Mojo Man From Mars," Jerry Reed's thick and gooey "Oowee Baby" and an answer song for anyone with questions of taste, "Taboo" ("What's for me, ain't for you"). Fiends of Dope Island doesn't just slip into darkness, it lives there, though at times the Cramps' hallmark nod and wink seems absent. But if you dig the Cramps scene, baby, this is it in all its perverted and shocker-ific glory.

DENISE SULLIVAN
(April 15, 2003)