Jookabox – Dead Zone Boys

Know much about Indianapolis? No, me neither. Hardly America’s most culturally-referenced city, the only other band I’ve knowingly heard that hail from that part of the world are 1980s punk outfit Zero Boys, whose brilliant 1982 album Vicious Circle was reissued by Secretly Canadian last year. Formerly known as Grampall Jookabox, Jookabox (chiefly David “Moose” Adamson) borrow elements from that album’s title track on a song here – ‘East Side Bangs/East Side Fade’. It’s almost unnoticeable, the textual reference inside the CD case at least as significant a homage as the musical reference barely heard on the song.

Dead Zone Boys apparently documents a twisted midnight version of “Indy”. Phantoms, zombies and and Black Sabbath-esque evil women haunt its fidgety, chaotic lyrics which are married to the ominous tribal beats, wonky synths and demented chants which echo a cheap Indiana-set 70s horror flick. Towards the end of lengthy stop-start collage ‘Gonna Need the Guns/Doom Hope’ a whirling cacophany of voices like crazed ghouls wail madly over the the song’s slow wind-down. ‘Zombie Tear Drops’ takes the vague horror theme too far however, taking a quite frequently silly record into numbing self-parody territory.

Generally though, Jookabox create a fascinating atmosphere on Dead Zone Boys. The songs are many-layered, frustrating attempts at genre classification by including industrial beats, sped up, slowed down and pitch-shifted vocals, damaged-sounding acoustic guitar and frantic chidlike chants, as on the infectious ‘Don’t Go Phantom’. At its best the album truly sounds like nothing else. The use of vocals is frequently impressive – something interesting is always being done with them on almost every track, especially on ‘Light’ which rescues the album from ‘Zombie Tear Drops’ and is gripping and inventive from start to finish. Ever surprising, Jookabox conclude with ‘F.I.T.F. #1′ which we soon realise refers to the oft-repeated phrase “faith in the fucking”.

An admirable and largely very entertaining attempt at a darkly distinctive record, Dead Zone Boys is a impressive if not entirely consistent effort. Most definitely worth a listen for anyone intruiged by the idea of a black-humoured and twisted genre-splice.

Buy the album on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/you-cried-me/id335229689?uo=4" title="Jookabox-Dead_Zone_Boys_(Album)" text="iTunes"]