The opening tune from It’s Just A Kiss-Off – the new album by The Del-Viles, is entitled The City, and it’s like a piece of chewed bubblegum, spat on the floor, rolled in dirt and pierced with shards of broken glass. It’s full-on garage rock with delicious pop sensibilities. It’s attitude and passion, spirit and soul, heart and balls. It’s the essence of so many incendiary acts that have come before this Minneapolis-based trio. It’s The Flat Duo Jets, it’s The White Stripes, it’s The B-52’s, it’s Ty Segall, it’s early-Black Keys, it’s Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and so many, many more. They’re in very, very good company indeed.
The guitars cut like chainsaws, the cymbals crash like waves and the bass throbs (and even features some occasional Entwistle-esque flourishes). It’s an unholy alliance, and at only 126 seconds long, it’s a small-but-perfectly-formed amuse-bouche that whets our appetite for what other delicacies are sure to come.
What You Got comes across like Jim Jones doing his best “I Just Want To Make Love To You”. Singer Ethan is gravel-voiced on a performance that feels more committed than a nun in church. The music is an old school R&B/rock n roll fusion. With just a touch of The Beatles Yer Blues thrown in for good measure. Full of attitude, heartache and endeavour, their enthusiasm is palpable and positively leaps through the speakers. These guys were clearly born in the wrong decade.
Two-Tone Dress is the lead single from the album and gets just a little bit funky with it. The slinky guitar in the intro is joined in due course by an Another One Bites The Dust-like bassline. The ragged tone of the guitar is consistent throughout and really creates a distinctive sonic palette. Speaking of The Sonics, there’s a touch of that here, too. Some of the riffage feels like it could’ve been taken from the same album that originally contained Have Love, Will Travel. The sparse production gives the instruments space to roam and to stake their respective claims on their share of the track. The balance is perfect, and the mix is flawless. Bravo to the producer/engineer/mixer.
Wild has a rebellious energy from the outset. It feels a bit like a grittier version of The Brian Jonestown Massacre at their most musically conventional. It’s earnest and full of retro-tinged soul and conviction – with the vocals being the best example of this, the accompanying guitar tone is as consistent as ever. Dan’s drums are absolutely beguiling on this one – they sound like a lightshow looks – your attention divided by the constant highlights peppered throughout the place, never knowing where the next instance of delight will be coming from. Gabs’ bass goes for a walk again, and the two work wonderfully together. This is how a rhythm section should sound. It also reminds us of the often overlooked, criminally under-appreciated Detroit acts The Dirtbombs and The Detroit Cobras.
The lyrics to If I Might If I May are positively spat at the outset. “Be quiet if you would please / If I might and if I may / I got things on my mind now / You know there’s things I wanna say” Ethan snarls before the vocals give way to a guitar tone that gets darker in the instrumental parts of the song. Bolstered by a bass that operates with the same freedom that was clearly present on the prior track and drums that sound like they’re being played by Animal from The Muppets, If I Might If I May is an unshackled, unbridled, unabashed rock n roll spirit in its purest form, and we’re absolutely here for it.
Up next is Don’t Hang Around which – rather surprisingly – takes a bit of a left turn. Beginning with more of a classic rock feel, it sounds a bit like what a fusion of Deep Purple, Led Zep, and recent discovery True Strays might sound like. The vocals on this one are the most measured that they’ve been on the whole album, thus far. Gone is the hoarse approach that has dominated the record before this point, and it’s replaced by a much gentler, smoother sound. By the time we get to the chorus, the instrumentation is grungier – but by no means is it grunge. It just has that sort of thick, sludgey, lethargy that can sometimes be found in 1990s alt-rock, slacker rock or, indeed, grunge. It feels like a very unexpected deviation at this point in the album, but stylistic diversity can only be a good thing, in our opinion.
The riff to Charlotte feels a bit like a modern-day Louis Louis. Perhaps mixed with Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine. With choppy garage vibes and a rough and ready vocal delivery, Ethan is backed up – as ever – by Dan on the drums, an absolute wildman on this one, and he’s in turn supported by Gabs’ bass, which is similarly untamed. The pieces of the puzzle come together to make something rather formidable for Charlotte. Don’t get us wrong, the whole album is a fucking powder keg, but this one feels especially explosive – perhaps more so because of the relatively mellow song that preceded it.
It’s followed by a groovy garage number entitled Skeleton. Formed around a walking bass, jazzy, splashy drums and a classic blues riff, it reminds us of Them/early Van Morrison. The verses are restrained and considered, comparatively calm, actually. Then, the fiery instrumental breaks (in the absence of a traditional chorus) feel like a release of accumulated tension. Special mention must again be made to the rhythm section. Gabs’ bass tone paired with Dan’s untethered energy makes for one hell of a pairing.
This is followed by Go Figure, which has – more or less – only one lyric, repeated and adapted throughout the course of the tune. “My baby started rockin’ and rollin'” screams Ethan as the band let loose – as they do. Rockin’ and rollin’ away, it’s incredibly 60s-sounding. Like something that could’ve been plucked from a Nuggets compilation. Or slide in alongside the other tunes there. And no one would bat an eyelid.
I Hate You starts with a lone, repetitive bass drum beat. The guitar comes in like a hot knife through butter. It slices through the near-silence with guile, grit and grandeur with the ever dependable bass completing The Holy Trinity. The lyrics go round in circles, centred around a love unwittingly lost and the feeling that follows, conveying one of our strongest emotions with alarming simplicity and what, in truth, almost seems like alacrity. Such big, negative feelings expressed in such an enthusiastic, thoroughly enjoyable way – that’s the magic of music for you, kids.
The album concludes with River Seine, an acoustic ballad that takes over as the softest moment on the record. With a vocal that reminds us of Aaron Lewis (sorry, but we’re millennials and therefore nu-metal kids at heart, beside, the guy can sing so shut up!) it gently tugs at the heartstrings with lyrics that are a combination of ambiguous (Drive around at 3 AM / search the corners for some sunshine) and alarming (I lost your face beside the river Seine / And I still can’t keep from crying)
It’s Just A Kiss-Off is our favourite thing we’ve heard so far this year, and we’re sure it’ll take some beating.
The album’s release will be commemorated with a show at White Squirrel Bar in St. Paul on March 7th. Grab a ticket if you can!
Written by Kinda Grizzly
