Wolfmanhattan Project

(Los Angeles, USA /// In The Red Records)

Who knows what possessed Mick Collins, Kid Congo Powers and Bob Bert to hook up for the Wolfmanhattan Project? But good thing they did, because here we have giddy garage contraption which combines Collins’ sci-fi obsessions, Powers’ hallucinogenic visions and Bert’s power-house pound—along with a hefty helping of fuzzy r ‘n r mayhem. This first full-length follows the “Smells Like You” single from 2015 (included here at track seven) in fine, trippy, weirder-than-you-were-expecting style.

The three principals are all legendary in a crusty, underground way. Mick Colllins spliced electric blues to garage stomp in the Gories, then rifled through Motown, Detroit House and Bubblegum in the ever-entertaining Dirtbombs. Kid Congo Powers played a role in two of American punk’s defining outfits, first the Gun Club and then the Cramps; more recently he’s backed Nick Cave in the Bad Seeds and recorded a string of wonderfully warped, tripped out garage albums with the Pink Monkey Birds.Bob  Bert was Sonic Youth’s first drummer (before Steve Shelley), and he’s also played with the Chrome Cranks, Pussy Galore and Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus. (Lunch turns up for a cameo in “Jar in the Staircase.”) That’s a lot of rock and roll history right there, but none of it weighs on their hard-knocking, rough-housing, just-out-of-true grooves. They play hard, with joy and eccentric intelligence right here, right now.