Gear Blues : Thee Michelle Gun Elephant : Review : Rolling Stone

They wear sharp black suits like a mod-pallbearer version of the Jam, and their name is a mangled salute to an old Damned album title (Machine Gun Etiquette). Singer Yusuke Chiba barks and warbles like the samurai twin of the Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra, and Futoshi Abe flails his guitar with the abused-power-chord glee of Pete Townshend and Johnny Ramone. In fact, everything about Japan's Thee Michelle Gun Elephant seems borrowed, then battered, with love. But the attention to visceral detail is what distinguishes Gear Blues from mere Nuggets and Brit-punk slavishness: the superheated rumble of Kouji Uemo's bass intro to "West Cabaret Drive"; Abe's psycho-staccato strum in "Free Devil Jam"; the whole band's hellbilly zip through "Satanic Boom Boom Head," which quakes like a Blue Cheer single with a Sun Records label. TMGE are, to be fair, conservative loons. They tear through Gear Blues, their fourth album and belated U.S. debut (it was first issued in Japan two years ago), with a military severity and stick close to specific strains of garage-rock tradition: the late-Fifties primal stomp of Link Wray; the black-chrome tonality of the Dead Boys and Motorhead; the British-pub-brawl frenzy of Dr. Feelgood and Thee Headcoats. And Chiba's lyrics, if the English translations are to be believed, are car-crash haiku ("A flask Baby Strawberry/Everybody World Monkey/One-way pilot candy, let's sell out!" -- "Soul Warp"). But there is no misunderstanding the hard muscle and euphoric velocity of "Dog Way," "Give the Gallon" or "Boiled Oil." TMGE, who have been making records and selling out gigs in Japan for a decade, speak classic punk and mod thrash like native lingos. "Skulls need thirty seconds to swing," Chiba yelps (apparently) in "Free Devil Jam." Thee Michelle Gun Elephant will have yours going in nothing flat. (RS 860)

DAVID FRICKE