Though it seems almost absurd to say, The Gories seemed to have cleaned up their sound on this record. Their first record House Rockin’ is bone raw, rustbelt trash rock which is almost sinister in it’s lack of control. Though it’s still a marvelous record; for I Know You Fine, they seemed to have built on that unhinged chaos, creating a slightly more coherent effort.
Coherency is one of The Gories’ strong suits. Trying to hold such disparate influences together — Guitar Slim, Chuck Berry, Link Wray, Bo Diddley, Suicide, Joy Division, The Sonics, in a slight way, Hendrix and voodoo — could make for a messy affair, but The Gories are masters at holding many contrasting sounds together at once.
The album is top to bottom nearly flawless sly and impish garage punk, shot through with minimalist deconstructionism and is built perfectly around the flinty, abrasive and subtly textured twin guitars of Collins and Kroha. O’Neil is the minimalist foil that drives each song — try finding another band, aside from perhaps Neu!, with a drummer who so thoroughly disregards the practice of doing "fills" and makes practically no rhythmic changes.
There are four stand out songs: The impeccably literate “Thunderbird ESQ,” a song about a guy wedded more to his fortified wine than his female companion, “Smashed,” about, well you can probably figure it out, the desperate “View From Here,” and, probably their most famous song, which is not saying much, “Nitroglycerine,” a particularly sweaty song, essentially about having sex and fighting.
The Gories put out one more album, the aptly titled Outta Here (1992), and then broke up. Mick Collins is in the band The Dirtbombs and Dan Kroha is in the creepy-looking Demolition Doll Rods. If you think that you are a fan of garage, and don’t have all three of their albums you should buy them today and worry about the appropriate self-flagellation later.
I mean this with all due respect — The Gories are to, that other band, what the Beatles are to Bad Finger. And that is no lie.
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