Alive Naturalsound Records

Independent record label based in LA. Home to The Black Keys, Two Gallants, Buffalo Killers, Radio Moscow, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Hacienda, John The Conqueror, Brian Olive, Black Diamond Heavies, Left Lane Cruiser, T-Model Ford, Thomas Function, Waves Of Fury, etc. More at www.alivenergy.com

Thursday, November 26, 2009

LEFT LANE CRUISER "All You Can Eat!!" recent reviews













Following 2008’s Bring Yo’ Ass to the Table, All You Can Eat assimilates the Mississippi Delta blues laid down by guys like Big Joe Williams and Son House and cultivates it into a country punk ‘n’ blues speedball. “Hillgrass Bluebilly” is a frenetic juke-joint stomper that finds Freddy J IV hollerin’ out a reference to the Who’s “Squeeze Box”. “Ol’ Fashioned” is a country-picking blues flashback with washboard, while the primal trio of “Black Lung”, “Broke Ass Blues”, and “Putain!” finds the boys strutting through stoner-blues country with bravado. It doesn’t get a lot better than this. – Alan Brown / PopMatters

All You Can Eat!! is old fashioned music without the slick production that I, for one, have grown so used to — and quite bored with. It reminds me of live Cramps, RL Burnside, and even old Henry Rollins. If CBGBs was still open that would be the venue I could see Left Lane Cruiser playing. Amid the dirt, the history, and the gritty smoky fog. – Lynda Lippin / Blogcritics

First cut "Crackalacka" comes scootin’ out of the gate with some cool guitar noodle while "Ol’ Fashioned" adds some wiry slide guitar and gravelly vocals, and "Black Lung" is its younger, tougher, more tweaked kid brother. Later, on "Poopdeflex" (song title of the year?) the vocals get more guttural and desperate and at that point you realize one thing about Left Lane Cruiser: they mean it, man. – Tim Hinely / Blurt

Some boxers are like Roy Jones Jr. in his prime and are damned near impossible to hit, some are like Pacquiao and just overwhelm opponents with power & handspeed, while others are like a young Tyson and eschew all style points for pure power. Left Lane Cruiser are like Tyson, and with All You Can Eat, their second album with Alive Records, they’re throwing haymakers from the opening track “Crackalacka” and their power is showing no signs of waning some 9 tracks later as they close with “Waynedale”. - Nine Bullets

This is good, this is very good, certainly not the putting in of a twenty and the taking out of a forty here, the good is there in these Broke Ass Blues. There’s just two of ‘em, broken down old scratchy electric guitar, gravel throats and drum kit. There’s some great You Tube footage if you have the time to go look. They got bags of soul in there, they got it all nailed, real deal stripped back raw broken bottle stripped to the bone blues goodness. – Organ Magazine

This would be a great soundtrack for a cage fighting medley and is definitely not something for the faint hearted.
Left Lane Cruiser tick all the boxes from the relentlessly hard hitting sound to their cool names. This is not something for the faint hearted. Rest assured this is more than you can eat! – Will Bray / Blues In London

This is a CD that any Guitarist or Drummer can appreciate with such RAW emotion behind every track grabs your attention and holds you too it till the next…and that doesn’t happen to often. AWESOME isn’t a big enough word to describe this band. – Neus Subjex

Five New Songs We Love: September 23, 2009 – Blender

But for the most part this is big, bold, in your face, industrial blues with a country punk attitude. "Waynedale" pounds along at such a torrid pace, it seems like the perfect music for the next Grand Theft Auto.
Producer Jim Diamond, who worked on the first two White Stripes CDs, should be credited for the full, fuzzy sound. He provided lots of old amps and a bunch of microphones in front of each one to record each muffle and crackle. The result is Megadeth if they had grown up in Louisiana listening to Delta country and blues. - Al Kaufman / Atlanta Music Guide

It’s a rumbling tinnitus-inducing musical vertigo of swampy Mississippi-style ghetto electric blues that’s greasy, grimy, gritty, and basically un-fucking-real. It’s the kind of music that should be played in dark, sweaty, dive bars while yer pounding shots of Wild Turkey. What you really need to know is that All You Can Eat has been in steady rotation since it came across my desk about a month ago and ain’t goin’ nowhere anytime soon. – Can You See The Sunset?

If this Indiana duo’s debut album, Bring Yo’ Ass To The Table, was merely an invitation to sample their bill of fare, then this follow-up certainly lives up to its title. All You Can Eat is another taut 35-minute blast of raw garage blues built upon the gigantic riffs of guitarist/shouter Freddy J IV, and the equally towering swagger of drummer Brenn "Sausage Paw" Beck. There’s a bit more of a streamlined quality this time through producer, and early White Stripes mentor, Jim Diamond, who obviously was enamoured with Freddy’s guitar playing. Its dominant place in the mix leaves everything else cowering in its shadow. That’s hardly a bad thing, as tracks like "Black Lung" and "Hard Luck" rock harder than any band with three times as many members could ever hope to. This is exactly the album LLC fans hoped for: another solid collection of material with just enough refinement of their sound to ensure that they have a vision for the future. – Jason Schneider / Exclaim

Left Lane Cruiser is the real deal. They are blues at its best, filth at its finest, with just two men who are evoking enough inner demons to populate an entire circle of hell. Raising a ruckus, punching throats, and blackening eyes all the way from Ft. Wayne Indiana, Left Lane Cruiser makes a bigger and louder racket than most five-man operations, never once sacrificing songwriting or musicianship for the sake of bombasity. – Andrew Bryant / Disc Exchange

Freddy J IV is actually quite the demon on the six-string – he plays like he’s visited a crossroads or two, with Kenny Brown by his side and a Lucifer bearing a strong resemblance to RL Burnside. He can do the grunged-out Zeppelin thing, too, when he’s of a mind (cf. Black Lung and Hard Luck), but he really comes alive getting his hands dirty. Frankly, Freddy’s not much of a singer, but when he digs into the frets it doesn’t matter. The songs are perfectly adequate for LLC’s purpose, which is to rock every room like it’s a deep South juke joint (despite the duo being from Fort Wayne, Indiana). – Michael Toland / Sleazegrinder

The band blends styles that wouldn’t normally be compatible, but when the two musicians come together — Evans with his slide guitar and vocals that sound as if his diet consists of swallowing sandpaper and chewing gravel, and Beck with his collection of hubcaps, trash cans, ladders and whatever garage accessory you can drum a beat on — the result is hard, rusty blues that Beck guarantees will get you moving. – Katie Saltz / Kentucky Kernel

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