Reviewed by Eric Saeger
There’s no lack of cred here – among other things, Cantora Records launched MGMT’s Time to Pretend EP into low orbit – and this SoCal guy-girl duo have their vibe down pat: George Thorogood hijacking White Stripes. This’d be a logical tour pairing with Band of Skulls, whose less rootsy, more Led Zeppelin-esque stuff has already proven to be car-commercial-ready, whereas Rumspringa’s neo-bar-band blues (complete with racetrack-megaphone vocals, which I can’t get sick of for the life of me) seems to want to teach Jack and Meg about Muddy Waters, for duty and humanity – you get the idea, a no-brainer similar to Dead Weather’s bayou-vampire murk. Venice-gondola overtones in slug-rocker Tryptych smack of Walkmen’s Lisbon LP, but that’s the only mustard they get on their curveball (this album hasn’t made the biggest splash in the world, probably mostly owing to this sub-genre stubbornness – at least Zeppelin toyed with 18th century American folk, and you sort of wish this generation… oh, I won’t waste my breath).
Grade: B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyCfmCWJoM
