Cheater Slicks – Ugly Things Magazine: Don’t Like You [REVIEW] (PRESS, UK)

CHEATER SLICKS –

CBGB 1992 (Almost Ready) LP
Don’t Like You (In the Red) 2-LP

With the fevered, rockslide cacophony of Cheater Slicks’ idiosyncratic sound, no one could’ve thought in 1992 that they’d still be at it 30-plus years later. But after a bit of a respite in the latter 2010s, the Columbus-based power trio has been active as hell the last few years with fine new albums, an upcoming archival live series, and this expanded reissue of 1994’s Don’t Like You.

The band formed in 1987 in Boston, MA, rambling. around with a standard rock lineup before ditching bass entirely and forming what I would become their garage trash template-no bass, more distortion. Their brew of Back from the Grave
Frankensteining, “European Son” guitar rush, Cramps-y grind, and dark, desperate punk howling has amassed one of the most loyal cult followings in all the underground.

Almost Ready Records head, Harry Howes, is an uber-fan who bugged the band for live tapes, and now has in motion a six-album/LP and cassette box set series of various live recordings rolling out through the next year. The first is an amazing document from 1992, taped off the board at the legendary dive, CBGB.

It captures a moment where the Slicks were zoning right the fuck into their sound. The recording is great, with a perfect mix for the Slicks’ style-not favoring one instrument or voice over the others, though of course the Slicks’ guitars can never be neutral. They flail around at maelstrom level, with Dave Shannon’s loopy leads jabbing at you every other moment. You’re reminded of Tom Shannon’s mutation of David Johansen/Lux Interior, and drummer Dana Hatch’s desperately depraved wail, as both their voxes have grown deeper with age. On “Wedding Song” and “Murder” especially, Hatch’s singing is a nightmare of fun.

There’s a swinging stomp through “Destination Lonely;” and a fast-ass “Can It Be” that takes what they did on the excellent seven-inch of that cover and runs it right off a cliff-in case you forgot the Slicks are a punk band. If they have since evolved into a slightly more exploratory act, this is the Big Bang of that, plan. CBGB 1992 is essential for fans, and would even work well as an intro for the curious. Certainly its timing is great as a primer for what’s to come on 1995’s Don’t Like You.

Tom Shannon’s liner notes for this excellent 2-LP reissue-featuring the original album remastered and 12 pre-album demos-say that the band were at a bad place at that moment, as Hatch had temporarily left the band during demo sessions; and he asserts that the Boston scene, so fertile just a few years earlier, didn’t give a damn about the Slicks. The band’s third album, Whiskey (In the Red, 1993), though had garnered some notoriety for the band out in the flaming circles of garage rock hell that were burning underneath the “Alternative Rock” trend
of the early ’90s. Jon Spencer (Pussy Galore, Blues Explosion) was garnering even more attention, and as he was a huge Slicks’ fan, the notion to get him to produce Don’t Like You seemed perfect.

Shannon cops to some queries the band had about Spencer’s mad scientist approach to cut’n’pasting up the band’s graveyard squalls, via stuttering edits, bits of noise effects, and vocal distortions and most infamously, the Spencer-led song. “Sensitive Side,” placed probably too early in the album. As with any attempt with such a gut-level band like the Slicks, the band and some fans are going to have their opinions about any production flourishes. But Shannon concede that Spencer “did everything he could to highlight the unhinged, unsettled aspects of the music”-not a bad idea with the Cheater Slicks.

In fact, Spencer’s ability to make tricky production tweaks sound as effortlessly chaotic as an empty beer glass being thrown at a wall meant the whole concoction worked. Not only does Don’t Like You remain a fan favorite, I’m going to guess it’s the best-selling Slicks’ album.

But the newly-remixed 1994 demos on the second LP here prove the band did have a point. Throughout the 12 songs that appeared or didn’t on the final album, the trio-no matter the troubles they were facing personally play with a ragged alliance that shows they were happy to wallow in the raw sonic squalor of that fruitful phase of their existence. As mentioned in Shannon’s liner notes,” “The songs would develop so easily then. They just came out of the air as if they had always existed.” These recordings do show off the strong songwriting skills that can sometimes be forgotten within the fury and flail of the Cheater Slicks’ instrument-immolating style.

The Cheater Slicks just played a few regional gigs, and with this run of older live recordings coming up, they’ll probably get the notion to go out and prove they can still do it. For now, revisit how it all kicked in with these records. (Eric Davidson)”