Fu Manchu
King of the Road (Mammoth)
by Brian Varney
“I live for cars and girls,” quoth Handsome Dick Manitoba. Substitute “weed” for “girls” and you’ve got the Fu Manchu “reasons for living” list within your grasp. That’s what they’ve always written about, and they ain’t about to change. Over the course of four full-length albums, a couple of 10″ EPs, and a few singles, Fu Manchu have created a legacy with single-minded devotion to such American (circa ’74) pursuits. They sing what they like and they like what they sing. That goes for the playing, too.
Despite their obvious reverence for slopped-out ’70s zoner-rock, Fu Manchu are actually quite concise – their songs rarely last longer than five minutes. There’s very little fucking around in any of this – they come in, they beat your ass, and they go out. What the fuck else do you want? King of the Road, they say. Yeah, no shit. They can go anywhere they want, as far as I’m concerned.
(www.mammoth.com)