The Luxurious Faux Furs is a duo that started in New York, which seems like a pretty fitting place for a garage-rock duo. The band has since moved to New Orleans, and their adoptive hometown seems to have affected their music. Granted, you’ll still hear a lot of garage rock, but now that rock sound is infused with a swampy blues.
The new album Like a Real Shadow may not be like a lot of albums you’ll hear this year. However, it should appeal equally to fans of garage rock and dirty blues.
Right from the opening notes of “Don’t Throw Your Love Away”, you hear the combination of a blues guitar part that you could easily hear on a Fat Possum release and a beat that brings The Cramps to mind. Meanwhile, the backing vocals sound like “Sympathy for the Devil”. The recording has a very lo-fi feel – almost like it was recorded in a garage or a basement. That’s not a complaint as it suits the song very well.
The interesting thing about this duo is that it has the raw energy and sound of a one-man band like Reverend Deadeye or Scott H. Biram. In that regard, it’s easy to imagine Jessica Melain (drums) and Josh Lee Hooker (guitar) on a street corner somewhere howling and playing for passersby.
This album doesn’t deal in subtleties. Unless you think a punch to the ear is subtle. It is all about loud guitars, howled vocals, and primitive beats. The marriage of lo-fi rock and roll and hypnotic blues is something like if The Gories had collaborated with R.L. Burnside.
This album passes before you know it – even with a closer that is almost eight minutes long. The band delivers some real footstompers as well as some slower songs that just beg to be heard in a dark basement bar.
