Amphetamine Ballads

Glasgow’s Amazing Snakeheads play a greasy form of rock ’n’ roll that evokes the danger and passion that Iggy Pop brings to the stage’s edge. Dale Barclay lets his deep brogue transform the words into the devil’s tongue for American ears, while his guitar bangs around untutored like The Gun Club at their scrappiest. Bassist William Coombe and drummer Jordan Hutchinson hold things together on menacing tunes like “Swamp Song” and “Flatlining,” where it feels like Barclay is freestyling and free-associating through their basic framework. Barclay’s guitar screeches in stereo then drops back as he wanders through “Where Is My Knife?” As this is their debut album, there's still so much to learn about these guys. Barclay sounds less literary but more physically threatening than The Fall’s Mark E. Smith and definitely not somebody you want to run into at night, as the drunken mumble of “Every Guy Wants to Be Her Baby” makes clear, even as a stray sax tries to smooth over the danger.