The Deadly Snakes

I’m Not Your Soldier Anymore (In the Red)
by Jon Sarre

From outta nowhere, well, Toronto, so it’s left field anyhow, comes a big bucketa soul fried up wit’ garage grease’n’some nice Memphis rootsy-type sensibilities (wit’ some help from Greg “Oblivian” Cartwright, who joins up wit’ The Deadly Snakes as producer/singer/guitar player). Pretty cool stuff and not just for a buncha Canadians, either. Dig the Diddley beat with farfisa warbles on “I Can Take It”‘s call’n’response schtick. ‘Tis real good, ‘specially when Cartwright freaks out in that Oblivians style. The first three are all ringers too, from the raved-up babble of “Graveyard Shake” and “West Texas Sound” to the sex dirgisms of “Twice as Dead.” “I Don’t Mind” recalls Mick Taylor Stones only with a snare-heavy beat that Charlie Watts usually eschewed. With Cartwright, it makes like seven people in the band, so there’s enough Snakes for funky Stax hornage, so yeah, they throw that in on “Talkin’ Down,” their hate the police talkin’ at ya and on “Make a Fool Out of Me,” which sounds like the Oblivians backed by Sam and Dave and the Bar-Kays. “Trigger” is a Salvation Army band weeper about a junkie prostitute or somethin’ close like an ex-girlfriend ya just wanna write a mean song about and when the action starts when he “invited her up to my room,” the band kicks off full-tilt shamble towards blackout, something which happens to the best of us sometimes.
(PO Box 208 Burbank, CA 91506)