The Graves Brothers Deluxe

Author: Silke Tudor
Magazine: SF Weekly

One of my favorite San Francisco bands from the early '90s was the unfortunately named -- but more unfortunately overlooked -- Engorged With Blood, led by former Chrome drummer John Hanes. The group's music was as thick and warm as Mexican tar; Hanes' voice, a rumbling basso profundo, coiled around indecorous lyrics and made me sweat; once and future Club Foot Orchestra guitarist Steve Kirk was both droll and feverishly inspired; and bass-about-town Dave Jess provided an impassioned drummer's heartbeat. The Graves Brothers Deluxe are a lot like that -- dark and alluring, with a penchant for sex, stench, and urban excess -- but while Engorged With Blood relished its hallucinatory, post-punk languor, this trio has sought wider hunting grounds. The act's forthcoming EP, Filter Feeders, moves from the menacing post-punk proposition "Right as Rain" to the psychedelic daybed of "And Then the Conversation Turned to Sex," then takes an abrupt turn into the speed run of "Raw Stinking Beauty" and the skewed whiskey-rock-and-whispers of "Powers That Be." Now confident that we are too disoriented and overstimulated to fight back, the band drops us into a turn-of-the-century poppy parlor, with Jose Alfredo Jimenez's "MuÒequita Negra," and finishes us off with a seductive interpretation of Pere Ubu's "Heart of Darkness," accented by a speak-sing purr that might make even John Hanes' blood rush. I don't think this is what our forefathers had in mind for us on the Fourth of July. Nonetheless, the Graves Brothers Deluxe support Killers Kiss on Friday, July 4, at Thee Parkside with Hiroshi Hosegawa's Poontang Wranglers opening at 10 p.m. Earlier festivities include a concrete barbecue with Deke Dickerson, Red Meat, and Chrome Johnson and a hot rod show at noon. Tickets are $5 after 9:30 p.m. and $7 before; call 503-0393. The Graves Brothers Deluxe also perform on Thursday, July 24, at the Hemlock Tavern with Continuous Peasant; call 923-0923. - Silke Tudor

Music Review: Boxcar Satan and the Graves Brothers Deluxe - Black Water Rising
Written by Pete Blackwell
Published February 20, 2007

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans in August of 2005, the physical toll was staggering. Over a year later the floodwaters are gone, the Superdome has been repaired and the residents of the Big Easy are struggling — slowly — to get back on their feet. But not all of the ravages of Katrina were physical, and a couple of New Orleans natives have taken it upon themselves to help address the psychological toll the storm took.

Black Water Rising takes on the traditional split single format, with San Antonio's Boxcar Satan trying their hand at a song by San Francisco's Graves Brothers Deluxe and vice versa. What sets this four-song EP apart is that proceeds from its sale are being donated to groups providing free mental health care to residents of the Gulf Coast. Stoo Odom of GBD and Patrick Sane of Boxcar Satan both hail from New Orleans, so the cause is near and dear to their hearts.

But don't buy Black Water Rising just for charity's sake; buy it because it's great, too. GBD does an excellent, understated acoustic bass and fuzz guitar rendition of "Shoot Down the Sun", and Boxcar Satan takes on "Legs Rub Together", showing off their mellow side for the first half of the track before bringing it to a rousing conclusion.

In addition to the regular split single fare, however, each band contributes a cover version of an old southern blues standard, and it is these songs that really make Black Water Rising stand out.

Boxcar Satan opens the disc with a raucous cover of "High Water Everywhere", a blues stomp by the legendary Delta blues guitarist Charley Patton. The Graves Brothers Deluxe do an uplifting cover of "Don't You Just Know It", a call-and-response R & B tune that was a Top Ten hit for New Orleans' own Huey "Piano" Smith in 1958.

The inclusion of the Patton and Smith tunes really rings true here, because Boxcar Satan and GBD are not only paying tribute to the city of New Orleans in its time of need; they're paying tribute to the indomitability of the spirit in the face of crushing adversity, and if that ain't "the blues", I don't know what is.

Pete Blackwell is a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. He lives in St. Louis, Gateway to the West and proud home of Provel cheese.
- Pete Blackwell

Boxcar Satan & Graves Brothers Deluxe
Black Water Rising
Dog Fingers Recordings

L'histoire est vite racontée. Sur l'album 'Black Water Rising', les Boxcar Satan de San Antonio ont rencontré les Graves Brothers Deluxe, qui eux viennent de San Francisco. Les premiers jouent un morceau des seconds et inversement. En plus, chacun des groupes reprend un morceau de quelqu'un d'autre (Boxcar Satan reprend Charly Patton et Graves Brothers Deluxe reprend Huey 'Piano' Smith). En tout, on a donc quatre morceaux. La musique, fichtrement convaincante, oscille entre du psycho-blues, du garage et du rock indie. Il faut savoir qu'une partie des ventes de l'album sera versée a des groupes qui sont engagés volontairement et bénévolement a la reconstruction de la Nouvelle Orléans apres l'ouragan. Donc, plus de discussion, courez l'acheter! [RP]

- Daily Rock, Switzerland
February 2007
- Daily Rock (Switzerland)

BOXCAR SATAN/ GRAVES BROTHERS DELUXE- Black Water Rising (www.dogfingers.com)

Proceeds from the sale of this CD will be donated to charities providing free mental health services to the Gulf Coast area. This is a fun, split CD and it's not too complicated. Two cool bands (Boxcar Satan & Graves Brothers Deluxe) join musical forces to help donate money for the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and the government's shabby treatment, and empty promises.) GBD delivers a bold performance of Huey "Piano" Smith's "Don't You Just Know It" with musical mastery of the New Orlean's Mardi Gras classic. It sounds like a backyard bar-b-que gone frenzied! Their other cut, "Shoot Down the Sun" (each band contributes two tracks), is awash in deep, roots rock. Boxcar Satan's contributions of "High Water Everywhere," and "Legs Rub Together" are Delta blues at it's finest, with some greasy garage rock thrown it for good measure. It's really good to see bands like this still contribute to a good cause, and keep it in our thoughts even after most of the media has abandoned the cause because it's not "headline worthy" to them. Maybe when they finish on guessing why Britney shaved her head (inquiring minds could give two shits), they'll get back to focusing on people with real problems. Buy the spit CD, and help some people who really need it.

- Phil Rainone - Jerseybeat

Boxcar Satan/Grave Brothers Deluxe
Black Water Rising
Dogfingersoxcarsatan.

Grave Brothers Deluxe and Boxcar Satan are both rattlin’ garage-blooze demons from the still-swampy disaster zone once known as New Orleans. In an effort to stem the flow of suicide and rampant alcoholism the tortured town is currently suffering under, the fellas have offered up this brief-but-effective 4 song EP, sales of which will be donated to charities providing free mental health services to the Gulf Coast area. And that’s noble shit, right there. The smirky irony of it all is that neither band sounds very stable in good days, never mind after a year of wringing out their sopping wet socks. It works, though. Boxcar Satan open with a gravelly, ghost-train rendition of Charley Patton’s “High Water Everywhere”. Grave Bro’s follow with a punchy art-soul work-out of Boxcar Satan’s own “Shoot Down the Sun”. Then they belch up a raunchy, all hands on deck slop-through of Huey Smith’s classic “Don’t You Just Know It.” It all ends 12 minutes later with Boxcar whispering through the jazzy breeze of Grave Bros’ “Legs Rub Together”. Great songs, even greater cause. Buy, don’t download, for once.

-Sleazegrinder - sleazegrinder.com

Black X Mass has been a San Francisco tradition since 1997. Over the years the audience has ranged from people who don't celebrate Christmas, to those who want to detox from a day of heavy dysfunction with their celebrating relatives and contemplate the possibility that they were adopted, to people who have recently moved to San Francisco and have no local family with whom to celebrate.

Black X Mass is presented by the First Satanic Church and its founder and high priestess, Karla LaVey...

... One of the headlining groups at Monday's Black X Mass will be the local band Graves Brothers Deluxe, who have been described as the Bay City Rollers meets the Jesus Lizard. This will be the fourth time they've played Black X Mass. Stoo Odom is the lead singer and guitarist and used to play in the Davis band Thin White Rope, which received a lot of college airplay in the '90s.

"Satan is the real reason for Christmas," Odom says, "because without him Jesus would've never had to die, and there would be no Santa Claus." - San Francisco Chronicle Dec 21, 2006

On his fourth full-length album, Stoo Odom of the Graves Brothers Deluxe returns to the late-night, jazz-tinged, baroquely sexual weirdness of his excellent Gonna Happen to You, after a brief flirtation with more conventional (at least by his standards) rock on Filter Feeders. The resulting Light stands as one of his strongest outings yet: it is creepily compelling, both lyrically and musically, darky humorous, and at once precise and ramshackle.

Odom is joined again by Willy the Mailman and Marcos Villalobos (who, among other things, were Noel Redding's backing band until his death a couple of years ago), with cameo appearances from ex-band member and sometime Resident Nolan Cook on guitar. Willy mostly plays guitar on Light, but gets to pick up his saxophone again for the instrumental "Drinking at the Sea Star", and again on the closing "The Flame of the Final Inferno Is a Jive Ass Hot Plate". Here, he duels with Stoo, who plays some sort of kazoo-like wind instrument, in a track that is at once free jazz experimental and sublimely silly. There are a few other instruments -- trumpet and trombone on "About the Future", various organs on "Drinking at the Sea Star" and "Nerves", and the mysteriously named "Flippytronics", credited to Odom, on half the tracks -- but the sound is, overall, stark.

Light opens with the chugging menace of "About the Future", in which Odom gets off lines like "I live in sin with my thoughts / but we'll get married soon / we fight and fornicate all night / then sleep til the afternoon" without cracking a grin. Horn flourishes slip through the crevices and vertiginous guitar dives add an apocalyptic commentary, but the song centers on rhythm, skewed poetry and groove. It and "I Hear Light Coming Down", which comes next, are Light's most overtly "rock" songs.

With "Legs Rub Together", the band embarks on an ominous, experimental run of songs, tackling sex, love and the fear of death. "Legs" is full of subliminally coiled tension: Odom reduced to a whisper, drums held to the merest hint muffled cymbal chinks, luminous guitar breaks shimmering and disappearing into the mix. The words are surreal and imbued with lust, as in the heavy-breathing "There's times when I smell doom / I crave bug spray perfume on you / yeah you / There's times when I smell death / I need hot, unwashed breath on you." Also in this vein, but even better, is "White Devil's Death Song", a Waits-ian calvacade of jury-rigged rhythms hitched to obscure and evocative found poetry. "Big Chain Store" has a slow-moving unease, long, distorted guitar notes weaving in and out of the steady pulse of beat. The wonderful "Drinking at the Sea Star" has no words at all -- just loose-limbed jazz bass and cymbals, punctuated by 3:00 a.m. flickers of lounge guitar and moaning saxophone.

Near the end, Light slips in an abrasive but loving cover of Diana Ross's "You Keep Me Hangin' On", with Willy on disco guitar and Villalobos slapping the hi-hat. Odom sounds like a desperate man, his voice fraying and cracking under the agony of unrequited love... or perhaps he's laughing his ass off at the ridiculousness of it all. It's hard to tell -- maybe a little of both. Either way, it's par for a band that's always dead serious, even when it's kidding.

-- Jennifer Kelly - Jennifer Kelly

Rated: 4 of 5

Review by:
Andrew Glassett

Retro-noir, what a concept. It's something that sounds old with a new twist. Oh, and it is also dark. Maybe it is actually a new kind of darkness. I'd like to think there are different kinds of darkness around; like the difference between a dark alley and a dark movie theatre. The first is just dark; the other is dark but also very comfortable. It is on these terms The Graves Brothers Deluxe have released their album Light.

It may seem ironic their album is called Light, but I think it actually fits the album perfectly. Their kind of darkness is the movie theatre kind of darkness, where all distractions are taken away in order to focus in on the intent and flavor of the production.

The vocals are amazing. Stoo Odom has tapped into an alter ego voice that sounds focused and almost cartoon-like at times. His voice is deep and sometimes sounds like he is singing a jangle-pop, good time-y song. "Legs Rubs Together" slowly develops into a darker and darker place before the song shifts into a coda that moves and grooves. Other songs such as "Seen It All" are a little lighter and more humorous. The organ provides such a wonderful churchy mood while the tremolo on the guitar is reminiscent of surf guitar. The chord changes and rhythmic vocals keep things interesting as the songs change from one track to another. There are also a lot of different instruments used such as stand-up bass, violins, horns, and various keyboards, which are arranged in the most efficient way possible as to not take away from the overall disposition of the album.

Overall, Light sounds like a backcountry Queens of the Stone Age, except more articulate and stimulating. The voodoo element obviously plays a part in creating an atmosphere of shadowy rock and roll goodness. The Graves Brothers Deluxe have succeeded in spawning a sound that is bigger than themselves; a feat that is done by very few bands. - Now on Tour

Every so often a band comes along that you just simply can't describe. You can't describe them because they don't sound like anything you've ever heard before. Comparing them to other bands would be a good starting point, but in the end, ultimately, it wouldn't do much good because no matter what I try and reference a band like Graves Brothers Deluxe to, they don't really sound like it, so you won't still get the full experience without hearing this for yourself. Kind of like a jazz, funk, soul band at times, other times they have a punk feel like Daycare Swindlers, and other times they have a just flat out rock 'n' roll quality. The lyrics are also, while somewhat bizarre at times, just overall great. The vocalist has a very distinguished quality of a gritty, deep sound with the occasional higher pitched screech and shift in sound.
If you listen to this CD, I can guarantee you that it will sound like nothing you've probably heard before. But, man, there should seriously be more bands like Graves Brothers Deluxe in the world. This is just awesome. - Nacho Cheese and Anarchy

"I Live In Sin With My Thoughts..."

These San Fran based mutations create deviant brown Woodtock acid voodoo visions out of a succulent stew of funky blues, a pinch of some depraved rockabilly-esque ripple n' rumble, psychedelic free jazz, post punk yet poppy noisescapes, arty Bowie /Roxy Music experimentation and....Ahhh fuck it all and fuck it, they make me think of alligators, them glideboats in the Everglades, alien abductions, corn circles, serial killers in the Australian outback, survivalists (weird, I know) and Doors songs I can't remember the titles of (the one that goes 'We go uptown, we go ALLLLL around'). Basically. Their 'Art-fag garage' is an enjoyable headfuck, I thus conclude. Serenely surreal, and welcomely so, lyics('I dreamt I got attacked by all the things in the sea food store...' on southern grill steak soulpopbebopbluesburger ' About The Future ') all schloozed out of a scotch soaked larynx that is a combustible cocktail of Jim Morrison (on the rougher been up been up all night riot on Haight/Ashbury ' Nerves ' and ' I Hear Light Coming Down '), Julian Cope (on more croonsome moments like ' Legs Rub Together ' - 'I crave bug spray perfume...or you' - which then transmogrifies into the finest thick stonersewageswamp Sabbath -esque slunk of the sort perfected, then casually discarded, by Smashing Pumpkins on 'Gish', that'd now make Billy Corgan run to the hills and join a Buddhist commune. He has? Oh), and maybe a sliver of Bon Scott (with an umbrella in of course), the spirit of John Fogerty seeping into the ice cubes, and some killer weed in that Mojito amongst the mint. Combined with very visual, cinematic music. Yuss indeed, ' Big Chain Store ' has an air of ambient Julian Cope doing his best Krautrock impression, dancing round the Avebury stone circle with The Flaming Lips that, combined with Red Crayola freeformfreakout finale (which is actually quite irritating, almost gave me a rash) - the appropriately nonsensically titled, or plain nonsensical really, ' The Flame Of The Final Inferno Is Jude Ass Hotplate' kinda had me convinced for a moment that out there in the Bay Area they exist as some extra-terrestrial genetically mutated spawn, maybe the offspring of those abductees from the fifties, and these tracks are them phoning home to the big mellotron in the heavens.

At first late night listen I woulda told you, with a certain sour-faced neat gin disgust, that the cover of Supremes classic ' You Keep Me Hangin' On ' had gotta be in jest, m'lud. Surely? On further listens tho I think it works as a perfect rash flat-trashing dehydrated, dog-eared, dog-eyed da gyul done left insanity plea...distorted vocals sounding like a man shriveling and distending from the inside out in a cheap sci-fi B-movie. Ennervating-ly, enjoyably erratic, worth a sniff, ya'll.

Now, where IS that Doors tape? This is how much of an enjoyable headfuck they are. They're making me use my precious Saturday time to look for Doors tapes I don't like...could almost be remote psy-ops if it wasn't such a pointless mission.
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-Stu Gibson - Sleazegrinder