John Paul Keith & The One Four Fives - Spills and Thrills

John Paul Keith & The One Four Fives are a psychedelic garage-rock band masquerading as Memphis country-blues. Despite their own insistence that they're a good-time rock 'n' roll band forged in the fires of beer joints and dives around Memphis, the liberal sprinking of surf-guitar and psychedelic organ on Spills and Thrills takes them to a range of places (including, bizarrely, close to the stoner rock of Josh Homme). Even when they are doing their best to hit more traditional country beats, the originality that they bring to their music forces them out of the genre's straitjacket, as on Second Hand Heart, which offsets Nashville convention with the off-kilter military drumbeat that propels it forward. This band obviously have the musical background and talent to make a living as a professional live act, but their subtle weaving of other genres into the beer-soaked sound of their debut LP creates a tapestry that suggests a trajectory above and beyond mullets and rednecks.