What hath
Jack White wrought? The second album by Atlanta (by way of Jacksonville) duo
Brass Castle is yet another uninvolving indie rock album by two guys with an appetite for lo-fi noise, fractured punk riffs, and a lot of bloozy posturing but not much in the way of craft. Christian Gordy and Chris Strawn have a regional reputation for wild live sets -- some of them supposedly culminating with Gordy detaching his artificial leg and throwing it into the crowd -- but despite occasional hints of that kind of bar band raucousness on songs like "Freon Nights" and "The Hawaiian," the flat production distances the songs, which themselves are rarely fundamentally interesting enough to make the listener fight through the bad sound and dull affect to pay full attention. Undoubtedly a blast to see live,
Brass Castle don't measure up on disc. ~ Stewart Mason