Concarnage

Chris Con Carne is a Bellingham, WA, duo that consists of Chris Lamb on Delta blues-influenced slide guitar and Dan Lowinger clattering away on furious, buckety drums. On Concarnage, the pair's raw-recorded primal blues falls somewhere in between the White Stripes and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. But Chris Con Carne is most successful when slashing away at instrumentals, such as the (barely blues) hard garage sound of "Math Rock" or the more blues-influenced "Burden of Proof." As a vocalist, Lamb often opts for histrionics over feel, growling and snorting his way to near-parody (à la Spencer), and that somewhat undermines the effectiveness of some tracks — though he does offer an able reading of Son House's "Preaching' Blues." Overall, however, this is a solid effort that sails on the back of Lamb's blistering slide and the duo's cheeky and gritty garage aggression.