This idea of alien pursuers is a new one: In the past, Dexter Romweber has always played and sung like he had hellhounds on his trail. Whether performing and recording as half of the Flat Duo Jets or commanding a stage all by his lonesome, Romweber has always made a righteous racket that refused to be defined by something as trivial as the number of personnel.
Joined by drummer Sam “Crash LaResh” Sandler and a handful of one or two-shot guests, Romweber tears through 18 songs like a double-parked fugitive, style hopping across primal rock and its stepbrother, rockabilly, as well as surf and anything else cooked up in a garage sometime in the last 50 years. Actually, he does slow down twice: Once on the sweeping ballad, “To Lose You,” one of 10 Romweber-penned tunes on the album, and again on the equally dramatic, album-closing version of Charlie Rich’s “Feel Like Going Home.” The rest of the time he can be found blasting out the Eddie Cochran instrumental “Guybo,” then following it with a near-skiffle version of The Who’s “The Seeker.” (Clever pairing that one, when you remember The Who’s ear-rattling take on Cochran’s classic, “Summertime Blues.”) Elsewhere, Dex brings such names as Ben Hewitt (“My Search”) or Sun Records rockabilly hero Johnny Carroll (“Rockin’ Maybelle”) back into your life–or, in my case, introduced me to them. Half of the originals are instrumentals, each with just the right amount of grease, roar, and/or tomfoolery. Special nods go to “Do the Lurd!!” with its Hasil Adkins-worthy title and “Walkin’ with Scary Hillbilly Monsters,” the theme song to the drive-in movie of Joe Bob Briggs’ dreams.
For now, let’s pray that Romweber keeps moving and stays a half-step ahead of whatever it is that’s chasing him.
