The Enemy Is Real

Tricky Woo manage to rein in a few of their more overt garage tendencies on The Enemy Is Real. The playing is better, the production is cleaner, and Andrew Dickson's vocals seem to have jettisoned much of the snottiness in favor of a more profound sleaziness. Though scribes like to toss around references like MC5 and Stooges when talking about Tricky Woo, those particular influences are less in evidence here than the more contemporary Rocket From the Crypt: the majority of the album's material is revved up, cranked up, and fed up. Barely any of the tracks here have the chance to get boring: the majority of them check in at under two and a half minutes, and many are less than two. Even with 14 songs, the whole album is only 32 minutes, and if they were honest it would only be 27 and a half (the last four and a half minutes of "Lead Wings" seem to be lifted directly off of the soundtrack of a Chinese movie). No matter how long the clock runs, it's a blast to listen to, and it certainly rocks hard. ~ Sean Carruthers