The Sons of Hercules – Get Lost – Review

The Sons of Hercules

Get Lost (Get Hip)
by Jon Sarre

On a good day, these Chesterfield Kings soundalike freakazoid’s’ll make ya forget that there’re few too many bands who can really play frenzied R&B-styled rock’n’roll (and far too many people out there who’d rather hear digitalized booty shake). On a bad day, hell, the Sons of Hercules are just another buncha throwbacks mired in ’60s fuzztones. Depending on what day you think it is, ya can’t deny that these Texans’ve handed Get Hip an exploding time capsulized dose of moronic pleasure that achieves the neat trick of recalling something that Sundazed mighta put out and charged too much money for without sounding all that dated. It’s primal, not primeval (which in the space of the time frame is only like thirty years, but, man, that’s old), Get Lost knocks ya around for the amount of time it takes to get off thirteen bursts of obnoxious guitar-driven punk juvenilia (as it refers to late ’60s punk, which, of course, was punk before anyone thought to call it that).

Produced by the ubiquitous Mike Mariconda in his usual gimmick-free style, this disc’s impressive for a whole messa reasons, mostly involving style, the band’s relative ingenuity, that elusive quality of knowing which records to rip-off at which time, and cuz it doesn’t have a single atrocious track that ya gotta suffer through – think about it, Cynics, Miracle Workers, even Lyres LPs almost all have a couple misfired originals or ill-chosen covers. The Sons even pull off the Byrds’ “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and fit the song into the context of the record so it doesn’t stick out like an extra eyeball. Ya wonder where you’ve heard it before, but it doesn’t necessarily sound like an obvious cover tune. To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear such great shit from a buncha weirdos in old clothes and beatle boots.
(PO Box 666 Canonsburg, PA 15317)