Wild Eyes S.F. ‘Get Into It’ LP/DD 2013

Booze, weed, sweat, fringed buckskin jackets, cowboy boots, chicks in hot pants, bandanas, beards, bikinis, fuzz pedals, dirt, volume, sex, bravado…the distillation of true, down and dirty rock and roll!!!

Take a trip back to San Francisco, Haight Ashbury, the 70’s are underway, Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin have shown how the blues can be beaten down and reformed into a harder, darker, nastier beast and bands are picking up on this, cranking their amps and beating the shit out of their drums to mutate the beast even further. Wild Eyes S.F. would have fitted right in perfectly back in 1971 but in 2013 they stand out as one of the best filthy rock and roll acts I’ve heard in the last five years, no, make that thirty!!!

Imagine early Cactus…wild, fuzzed up deviations on blues themes played from the guts and the heart with more than a passing nod to the groin. Music played with every ounce of passion available that almost literally drips from the speakers. Now take Janis Joplin’s raw, powerful howl and lay that over the top relating tales of rock and roll excess and you have the recipe for rock and roll perfection. That’s San Francisco’s Wild Eyes S.F. in a nutshell.

Featuring Saviours drummer and bassist Ben Richardson and Carson Binks, guitarist Chris Corona and the soulful, soaring, searing vocals of Janiece Gonzalez, Wild Eyes S.F. have crafted a seven song set of pure rock fury of the highest order. This isn’t an album purely based on bluff and bluster though. Sure the riffs are as big as your momma, the bass grinds like Geezer Butler inhabiting the soul of Tim Bogert and the drums threaten to flay the skin off a Bison while Gonzalez’s voice sounds for all the world like she works as a cigarette and whiskey tester with a story to tell, at once sexual, scary, powerful yet fractured, but the songs…oh the songs!!! Awesome choruses punctuate each stinging guitar line and the lyrics could almost tell the story of the film Almost Famous. This album is a brief journey into the life of a rock and roll band, the ups and downs…but mostly the ups, or should I say the highs!!!

I thought Who Can You Trust Records had really hit a peak with Hot Lunch, another incredible band, but in Wild Eyes S.F. they have set their bar so high it’s starting to form ice!!! This album is going to be with me for a long long time to come.

I like it, just a bit, can you tell?

Label: Who Can You Trust Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp

Scribed by: Ollie Stygall