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Published on 8/28/08
Video
The Annex (LES); Tue 15
Joshua Macero, guitarist and vocalist for Alabama’s Thomas Function, sings in a register somewhere between whine and squeal. In contrast with Southern stereotype, he generally sounds agitated. On Celebration (Alive Naturalsound), his band’s full-length debut, Macero chirps and quivers and, mostly, the music corresponds. The quartet openly flirts with an array of genres—garage, country, old rock & roll—but the driving force seems to be tasteful ’70s punk from both sides of the Atlantic. On “A Long Walk,” the group throws guitar daggers familiarized by Television; “Snake in the Grass” has a bratty anthemic bounce akin to the Buzzcocks. (Both songs also echo Thomas Function’s West Coast contemporaries, the Old Haunts.) While these influences are uniformly thin and guitar-centered, Thomas Function places a menacing keyboard drone behind its every yelp—a sly gothic touch, burbling up from Alabama.
—Jay Ruttenberg
