The King Khan & BBQ Show

Add Date: November 3

Artist: The King Khan & BBQ Show

Album: Invisisble Girl

Label: In The Red

Genre: Garage Rock

Comments: I'll be honest. While I do totally love garage rock, I cannot usually tell the difference between bands of this genre. Listening to some garage rock megamix generally creates the same effect of listening to a single album by a single band, and while there are certain advantages to this, it makes reviewing garage rock a pretty big hassle. I mean, how do you compare this sort of thing? By whether the songs feature just 2 or 3 chords? Is the keyboard noise softer than the never-ending rhythm guitar?

Thankfully, Invisible Girl manages to separate itself from the pack, for better or worse. Listening to the album, you get the impression that this band is about five million times better live than in recorded form. The promotion sheet basically admits as much, talking about showmanship and in that breathless stream-of-consciousness style that is starting to turn into a warning signal while reviewing albums. There's a sense that the album versions are just sort of baseline models, patterns that can be improvised in a myriad of ways while the band is simulating sex acts with his guitar. In other words, they're sort of holding back.

Still, just because they're not showing their TRU POWER doesn't mean this is simple garage rock. There's a surprisingly amount of experimentation in the album, and the band has some serious technical talent. However, not all of the experimentation works, and the sound is certainly at its best when it's snarling at the microphone. This ironically means that the latter half of the album, which is much more generic garage rock oriented, is also a little more fun to listen to. My favorite of the weirder tracks, "Do The Chop," is also in the latter half, so hooray for Canadians that don't follow the rules of making trash latter halves.

DNP: 7, Rec: 1, 2, 4, 9, 12