The Turpentine Brothers are doing what The White Stripes can only dream about – creating loud, nasty, greasy garage rock in the spirit of the originators of the genre, and without the half-assed art school pretensions of Jack White. There are a few superficial similarities between the Bros and the Stripes: both work without a bass player, and both have a female drummer. Oh, and the fake-sibling thing, too.
There are some mighty big differences, though. Tara McManus can actually keep time, for one thing. And how! She pummels, pounds and generally kicks percussion ass. Nothing too subtle, but then again subtlety is not called for. This is crushing rock & roll we’re talking about, not the Junior League’s annual flute concerto. Bash it out and move on is the name of the game. And she does, with aplomb.
Also, Justin Hubbard can sing without sounding like an asthmatic stoat. That’s a big step up right there. His vocals contain the requisite amounts of snotty aggression and slurred consonants. (I’m pretty sure he’s pissed off about something on “Somethin’s Not Right”, but I’m not sure exactly what it might be.) And let’s not overlook his appropriately down-and-dirty guitar playing; the tone he achieves on the instrumental “Wrong Night” is one I haven’t heard on too many records made after 1966. This is a very good thing he's accomplished.
And then there’s the band’s secret weapon, the element that puts them head and shoulders above the vast majority of combos plowing the same field – namely, the wicked keyboard stylings of one Zack Brines. Oh my goodness, what a difference a little Wurlitzer makes! The left-hand keyboard bass fills out the bottom end magnificently, leaving Hubbard free to focus on six-string freak-outs and trashy chording, while the right hand makes with the swirling counterpoints and carnival/roller rink solos. It’s everything that worked about Ray Manzarek’s sound, only scaled back a bit and without Morrison spewing ostentatious, dime-store Freudian/literary eyewash all over the top of everything. Yay!
Plus, they’ve got the very good taste to cover the likes of Curtis Mayfield (“Fool For You”), Charles Brown (“I Wanna Be Close”), and the Holland – Dozier – Holland composed “Love’s Gone Bad”. A lot of neo-garage bands fall into the trap of forgetting about the R&B lust of the original garagistas and sticking solely with the British Invasion sound – which was itself derived from R&B. They end up with a watered-down, pale imitation of what it’s really all about.
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