The Fleshtones

What makes the Fleshtones' first album a terrific record is that these guys love their
garage-rock R&B not just for how it sounds but for what it can say. They're passionately
romantic and passionately angry, too. And passionately knowing about all of it. Every cut
kicks in. There's a palpable joy in the way guitarist Keith Streng's Ventures-style Sixties
guitar will suddenly explode into street fights of dancing noise, in the bigger-tha... More >

This is where they get the junk-rock down--reckless enthusiasm plus the less stylish strains of late-'60s dance music add up to their own groove. But though it's hooky and endearing, it's short on what one might call nuggets, which is why a whole side of unexceptionably jet-propelled tracks tends to lose momentum. In fact, whenever I try to concentrate for even an entire cut, my mind starts to wander, just like with Jackson Browne. (Grade - B+)