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Duuude, Tapes! Geezer, Live! Full Tilt Boogie

geezer-live-full-tilt-boogie-baggie-and-all

If you haven’t seen them, the fluid bluesy grooves emitted by New York trio Geezer are best consumed live. The three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Pat Harrington, bassist Freddy Villano and drummer Chris Turco have a marked, well-developed chemistry that comes across onstage, and while their latest, here-today-gone-immediately vinyl EP, Gage (review here), did well in capturing it, sometimes you just need to go to the source. To that end, the band present Live! Full Tilt Boogie (also stylized as LiVE! FULL Tilt Boogie), a limited cassette release of a live show recorded May 31 at their regular haunt, The Anchor in Kingston, NY, with five songs and a clear glimpse at their penchant for heavy rolling groove.

geezer-live-full-tilt-boogie-tapeLive! Full Tilt Boogie is mostly a digital release, but the band pressed up 25 tapes and tossed them in what they cleverly dubbed the “Full Tilt Baggie,” also including a download card, band sticker, STB Records button, Geezer patch and a sticker for Harrington‘s regular podcast, the Electric Beard of Doom. There are still a couple left through Geezer‘s Bandcamp, but as one might expect, the highlight of Live! Full Tilt Boogie is the boogie itself, i.e. the music, which thrives off the raw live sound and gives even newcomers to the band a vital representation of what they do, Harrington‘s throaty delivery topping the faster bounce of the opening title-track and the memorable starts and stops of “Pony,” taken from Geezer‘s 2013 Electrically Recorded Handmade Heavy Blues debut full-length, slide guitar winding around the steady bassline and cycles of drum fills.

“Long Dull Knife,” which closes out side one of the tape, is introduced as “a new one” and is a tale of wuh-muhn problems set to a nodding stoner riff and peppered with wah/whammy effects around a catchy chorus. Side two gets underway with driving push of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” which on the debut boasted a harmonica but here is given a more straightforward rock presentation as it makes its way toward a jam that emphasizes one of Geezer‘s great strength both live and recorded. Pacing is part of it, but the band’s songwriting eases the listener so smoothly into these quiet stretches, some brief, some long, some exploratory, some plotted, that one almost wakes up inside wondering how they got there. In the case of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” the chorus soon returns to deliver the blindside blow, but “Ancient Song,” which closes the set and thus the tape, is more stretched out, topping nine minutes of languid, unfolding jamming. geezer full tilt boogie jcardFrom where I sit, “Ancient Song” is Geezer‘s best work to date, honing not only what’s best about their style — the slow nod, bluesy riffing, blend of jam and hook, etc. — but also their perspective. These guys aren’t coming out of the gate trying to sound like kids. “Ancient Song” is grown up, with a sense of self-awareness that works well alongside its fuzz and liquefied rhythm.

Probably not a major release for the band, but a pleasant stopgap anyway that shows off their live chemistry and gives a look at some new material besides, Live! Full Tilt Boogie is both a merch-table curio and an example of the lack of pretense at the hear of what’s appealing about Geezer in the first place. They’ve worked quickly over the last couple years to develop this affinity for pushing heavy rock and blues into sharing a sonic space, and I think we’re just getting to the start of hearing what that sounds like as interpreted by the band. If Live! Full Tilt Boogie is your first experience with Geezer, you’ll still find they’re worth the look.

Geezer, Live! Full Tilt Boogie (2014)

Geezer on Thee Facebooks

Geezer on Bandcamp

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