It's predictable and kind of sad that every new
rock band with a sludgy, prowling, blues-based sound gets compared to The
Stooges. Awesome Color is just such a group—and sure enough, its
self-titled debut was overwhelmingly labeled and dismissed as a Stooges knock-off.
What really hampered the disc wasn't unoriginality—as if that even
mattered—but a hesitance that came from the trio's relative youth and
inexperience. Awesome Color's sophomore effort, Electric Aborigines, has outgrown that
greenness; in its place teems a lush, tangled mass of rock 'n' roll. Granted,
it's an orchard full of poison and thorns: "Come And Dance" drips and slithers
with lascivious menace, and "Outside Tonight" spares no jagged edge in its
quest to dissect itself. All of Awesome Color's cracks have been
spackled with echoes, organs, and swirls of diseased paisley, evoking the pulse
and haze of everyone from The Scientists to Hawkwind to Sound Of Confusion-era Spacemen 3. "Sayin'
it, that's one thing / Doin' it, yeah, that's another thing," snarls guitarist
Derek Stanton on the bruised-to-bursting "Step Up." And throughout Aborigines, Awesome Color has
followed its own suddenly sage advice.