Chicago’s Toupee purvey a strain of primal rock born in sweaty basements and DIY living rooms, founded on grimy twin guitar leads and brought to kicking-and-screaming life by frontwoman Whitney Allen’s ecstatic yelp. Their music reaches your ears as an blaring echo cast off a low hanging rafter, skirting past the wall of rusting radiator pipes spaced between the newly respackled holes in the plaster made by accidental elbows and fists. Last year’s full-length Dinner Parties veered between narcotic drone balladry and pure six-string sludge presented in both long form and in minute surges of fuzz not far removed from the kinetic punk grind of, say, Meat Puppets or early Minutemen. A new 7-inch offers two short and sweet Toupee cuts just for your pleasure: “Yeehaw Grandma” and “Water Torture.”
“Yeehaw Grandma” kicks off with a chiming guitar line that gently phases like a recasting of The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” before splintering into a pounding grunge workout with the onset of that nice & dirty guitar #2. It sounds like Whitney Allen “want[s] to ride on a rollercoaster,” and the band provides the topographical peaks and troughs to fulfill her wish. The ride cymbal sparks the wordless two-guitar chorus into a deeper groove, and the track ends quicker than you’d prefer, perhaps. Feel free to press play again.
You can order the “Yeehaw Grandma” b/w “Water Torture” 7-inch from Lake Paradise Records right now.
• Toupee: https://toupee.bandcamp.com
• Lake Paradise Records: http://www.lakeparadiserecords.com