Os Haxixins (ano1)

Named for a band of hard-living 19th century poets and intellectuals with a powerful fondness for hashish, Os Haxixins are a retro-styled garage rock combo from Sao Paulo, Brazil who play this stuff with a keen eye towards authenticity — they use vintage gear exclusively, wear period threads rescued from junk shops, and even postponed the recording of their debut album until they could find a local engineer who could capture their sound on analog tape rather than a digital hard drive. And the effort seems to have paid off — Os Haxixins gets the sounds right, but also captures an impressive share of the gritty, fuzzy soul of classic garage rock and early psychedelia on these 16 tunes. Dominated by Alexandre Alopra's loping Farfisa organ patterns, Os Haxixins recall the druggy fire of the Seeds and the Electric Prunes, though if anything, they manage to sound even more primitive than their key influences, and while they take a purist's approach to garage rock, they're not afraid to get aggressive, especially when guitarist Fabio Fiuza hits his fuzz pedal for a ripsaw solo. Though English lyrics pop up here and there, the bulk of the songs are sung in Portuguese, which for English-speaking garage fans might make this either more exotic or less approachable, but it also gives Os Haxixins a sonic personality that helps set them apart from plenty of other acts on the contemporary garage scene. Some bands obsessed with the sounds of the '60s don't do much more than recycle what earlier groups have already created, but Os Haxixins stay true to their vision of the past while bringing something to the style that's their own, and this is certainly one of the better garage revival albums to emerge in recent years.