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Tinderbox Music
Words by Craig Hartranft, 17.05.2014
First spin and first song, and I ask myself what am I hearing? Tijuana Bullfight sounds like rehashed Nirvana, perhaps even a poor man's Nirvana. The singer has the nasal droning style of Cobain without necessarily sounding like him. Or maybe Nirvana washed through some Queens of the Stone Age on their new album Southern California.
The call their music Southern California sludge. I guess so. The sound is thick and heavy, but not always that plodding through six inches of mud in Doc Martens slow that some would expect from sludge. They got some psychedelic thing going on too. The guitars are not only down tuned, but fuzz busting. And when you can catch a solo, and there arn't many, maybe one, it's got the psych-rock groove. Notable is Wide Awake.
Mostly the formula of slow to moderate paced rock, fuzzed riffs, heavy bottom end, and droning vocals is the pattern from start to finish. Call it post-grunge, psychedelic stoner rock. Frankly, it's all rather monotonous and uninteresting. TB does a cover of the Psychedelic Furs' Heaven, but you wouldn't recognize it as they trash it with ease. Check out Tijuana Bullfight if you like QOTSA, Nirvana, maybe some Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. But all bets are off. Best part of the album: the good-looking babe in a bikini on the cover.
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Tijuana Bullfight's Southern California is some form of post grunge, fuzzed out psychedelic stoner rock, and mostly monotonous and uninteresting.
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