Twisted Teens - Blame The Clown

Twisted Teens record like the tape machine might catch fire. The New Orleans outfit built Blame the Clown on the road, and it shows. Their second album first surfaced as a limited pressing during a European tour before getting a wider release, and the songs carry the loose confidence of material played hard and often before anyone bothered to document it.

C.P.N. "C-Bird" Hollywell handles essentially everything here, guitar, vocals, bass, drums and synth, while "The Razor" Ramone's pedal steel cuts across the top. That combination is the whole trick. The steel pulls toward swamp pop and country balladry while the rest of the band pulls just as hard the other way, landing somewhere between primitive rockabilly and something considerably meaner. "Is It Real?" opens fast, "100 Bill Is Gone!" swings its chorus like a mission statement, "Peekaboo Hand" and "Circus Clown" arrive quick and leave a mess, and "White Hot Coal" slows down just enough to prove the restraint is a choice. Hollywell recorded it himself under the name Cas P. Ian, with Jaxon Vesely mastering.

Where the 2024 self-titled debut scattered ideas across genres, this one tightens the link between structure and feeling. The steel is woven into the songs rather than laid on top, and reviewers have read it as the natural next step: rough by design, never sloppy, the kind of record that gets better the longer it spins.

Second pressing on Robin's Egg Blue vinyl with insert, pressed at Outta Wax. Twelve tracks on Chain Smoking Records, CSR 035.