Take Jennie to Brooklyn

There haven't been too many keyboards-and-drums duos in the history of rock & roll (Lee Michaels and Attila come to mind), but it's easy to wonder why after listening to Tom Merrigan and Andy Pierce, aka the New Rags, on their six-song, 16-minute EP Take Jennie to Brooklyn. Actually, the sound here is not so much reminiscent of Michaels' classic rock or Attila's heavy metal as it is like another unadorned rock duo, the White Stripes, with keyboards substituted for electric guitar. "Recorded entirely on Otari MX5050 MKIII-8 to achieve the fullest truth," reads a sleeve note, and the fullest truth entails some degree of distortion, but all in the name of fervent rock & roll. Merrigan sings in a slightly strained tenor while providing lots of electric piano and organ chording, and Pierce pounds away busily as if the two were in a garage somewhere. The music could have been made any time in the last 40 years, from the sound of it, with a likely date closer to 1965 than 2005. But the excitement never lets up, and the listener never wants it to stop.