La Sirena De Pecera

IF FRENCH is the lingo of lurve, then, according to Old Time Relijun, Espanol, Italiano and Portugues are the vernaculars of sexual psychosis.

So, what is it about south of the border accents that immediately conjures up images of incest, whiskey and Holy Jesus belt buckles? From '50s Tex-Mex chicano-ry to '60s lotus eaters like Roky and Doug to Cypress Hill's barrio b-movie, Mediterranean-derived phonetics have always sounded synonymous with various forms of deviance and machismo. Maybe it's a mother thing.

But so much for the language. Musically, La Sirena De Pecera invokes The Pixies' necrophiliac racket circa Surfer Rosa, plus The Birthday Party's backwoods rites, had Nick and co. made the acquaintance of Steve Albini on the set of From Dusk 'Til Dawn.

OTR are all stick-shift rhythms (courtesy of Phil Elvrum on percussion and Aaron Hartman on upright bass) debased guitar figures - or rather, disfigures - and the dirty mongrel vocals of nutcase singer (singer!!!?) Arrington de Dionyso. Top all this off with some deep-fried bass clarinet on chunks of fucky-wucky funk trash like 'Canoe', 'Moon' and the spazzy 'Circuit Breaker', and you've got a truly antisocial din to compare with The Cramps, The Fall, The Gun Club, Captain Beefheart and The Jesus Lizard, except rougher around the rump-hole than all of those acts combined.

Sure, Old Time Relijun may be crude, but they piss all over 80% of the steaming spore passed off as rock 'n' roll in these isles at present.

Flame on!