Danko Jones
We Sweat Blood
Razor & Tie
Razor & Tie can call We Sweat Blood “old school rock” and “glam rock” all it wants, but it doesn’t hide the fact that this album is actually 100% 21st century cock-rock. Even AC/DC never fashioned a musical statement so concerned with getting laid, and that’s saying something. The band pulls off the macho strut surprisingly well, thanks largely to the firmly tongue-in-cheek delivery of Jones, his David Lee Roth homage through manic scats and yelps and the absurdly moronic turns-of-phrase (see the entirety of “Hot Damn Woman”). It all plays like a gigantic cartoon or caricature of a genre that’s ridiculous to begin with. Take the opening line of “Love Travel,” for example: “Baby I want to put some mileage on your love bike.” Where’s the metaphor, where’s the allusion? It’s completely bludgeoned to death underneath Jones’s libido. Generally, it’s fun stuff – especially “Lovercall,” with its Prince-esque sermonizing to the unlucky in love – but after a while Jones’s one-track mind fails to spark interest. The hellfire-fueled title track and “Home to Hell” manage a different kind of angst but fall a little flat in the end. Perhaps the most interesting song in Danko Jones’s canon is “Strut,” where the previously objectified woman is given her chance at sexualized leering. I suppose this track is Jones’s contribution to the evolution of cock-rock … the introduction of vag-rock?
Razor & Tie: http://www.razorandtie.com
