Artist:     James Williamson & Deniz Tek

Album:     Two to One

Label:     Cleopatra Records

Release Date:     9.18.20

90

BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

Raw Power had a mean streak a mile wide. Vicious and menacing, it cruised the streets spoiling for a fight, bruising and battering everyone it encountered with its slashing, rumbling proto-punk savagery and bluster. Even if shoddy production robbed the 1973 album of some its potency, just a cursory listen to the ferocious and feral Iggy Pop and The Stooges classic could send someone to the hospital, or the morgue, with bloody scratches and internal injuries.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, native Deniz Tek was listening the whole time, eagerly devouring every hot-wired guitar lick and deliciously dark snarl that James Williamson pulled off with aplomb on that infamously violent recording. Tek brought the same blazing intensity and Detroit grit to Australia’s legendary Radio Birdman, helping punk rock establish a firm beachhead in that country.

Not surprisingly, considering their similar tastes and backgrounds, Tek and Williamson formed a friendship and creative partnership that’s yielded their new bare-knuckled brawl of an LP, the rock-ribbed Two to One. The vim and vigor of bassist Michael Scanland and rhythm section partner Michael Urbano on drums and shaking percussion propels the rugged action forward in sinewy fashion, while the cooing backing vocals of Petra Haden and Andrea Wasse soften and soothe, with keyboardist Nicholas Francis Stein filling up spaces with angry color. As for Tek and Williamson, they still like to play rough with their amplified guitar skirmishes, as the feverish rock ‘n roll boogie of a raucous “Jet Pack Nightmare” comes firing out of the chute and the nasty, dirty bomb “Stable” blows up the way Raw Power’s “Search and Destroy” did all those years ago, sending shards of sharp, razor-blade riffs at its target.

The tough, slow-burning ballad “Take a Look Around” is as meditative and mesmerizing as a lonely campfire, while a harder, more melodic “No Dreams” can’t seem to shake its bad mood. Two to One perks up with driving, up-tempo rockers “Progress” and “Liar,” with the Spaghetti Western tones of “Good as Gone” rambling through cinematic scenery. This is a welcoming country for old men, as Two to One comes off as a bit of a world-weary, but still charming, crank, tackling ecological catastrophe in a cautionary and anthemic “Climate Change,” shrugging off modern conveniences in gnarly road songs and reminiscing about what it’s like to live on the edge.

—Peter Lindblad