The Cops "Free Electricity" (The Control Group)
By Trey Perkins
Monday. Jan 07, 3:33 PM
Straight up urgent motherfuckin’ rock and roll.

So basically, The Cops are from Seattle, WA, and they are as straight up and urgent as just about any rock band out there. Comprised of Michael Jarowski (guitar/vocals), David Weeks (drums), Brian Wall (bass), John Randolph (guitar), and Brandon Bay (guitar), the officers know that pure rock and roll requires the guitars to be front and center above anything else and anchored by a grumbling back beat. Free Electricity is bare bones, heavy blues-riff’d guitar rock. In fact, if you could meld the liberation of a band like The Clash with the edgy roughhousing Mississippi blues of Keith Richards, you’d pretty much get The Cops.

“It’s Epidemic” bursts right through the speakers like a dual guitar avalanche, and the axes have that planned sloppiness, too. It’s almost like they intentionally sound like Jimmy Page on a night when he shot more heroin than he thought possible, only way more precise and a lot cleaner than Page ever was, even on the ’77 Destroyer tour. I mean, this really puts the urgency back into rock: as raw as any band right now. Just when you were content to sit back into relative complacency with soporific bands like Wilco, Free Electricity reminds you that the only guitars worth playing are beat up Strats and Les Pauls wired through Marshall Tube half stacks, heated up to oblivion.

There’s one complaint, though: they never strain from the roughhousing rhythm, and the lyricism could be stronger. A case in point? “Them Cats” is a hard funk rollick with verses like “Them cats / they liked to be shellac’d / them cats / they like to smoke that crack / them cats / they like to shoot the smack.” Okay, it’s a little sub-mongoloid, even for the kind of hardcore butt rock found on Free Electricity, but what’s an omelet without breaking a few eggs? Still, there’s some hard-ass energy on Free Electricity, and anyone who misses smartly written guitar rock should check it out.
www.thecopsmusic.com
www.controlgroupco.com

Click here to buy this album on iTunes!

Click here to download the iTunes jukebox application for Macintosh or Windows!

Trey Perkins

Got something constructive to say? By all means, rant away. Gonna blab about something unrelated and/or talk shit? Don't expect your comment to stick around.