CD Reviews

Hot Snakes

Thunder Down Under | Swami

By ZACH BARON | September 18, 2006

3.5 Stars

Hot Snakes were legendary BBC DJ John Peel’s final session, and the recording that came out a few months after Peel’s passing appeared for a time to be a swan song for the San Diego–based band as well. What the session, for all its historical value, didn’t do is convey how raucous Hot Snakes, a group formed from the ashes of Drive like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt, could be live — how effortlessly, sneeringly competent they were on the spot. Hence Thunder, a full-length Australian radio session that, in its breathless, one-song-to-the-next cavalcade of three-minute, immaculately crafted cynicism, punches the clock one last time for posterity. Rick Froberg’s urgent bleat degrades into a muttered, running commentary on all kinds of control: financial, social, and the kind dearest to the band, creative. And the sound, so stark as to be transparent, unmasks a band furiously getting through their songs, one last time.