Golden Animals: Free Your Mind And Win A Pony

By: Dennis Cook

The blues are a rangy, unpredictable beast. For all the 12-bar cowboys trying to rope ‘er into domesticity, there’s free-range mustang lovin’ folk like Golden Animals. There’s the freshness and apostle’s zeal of early Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Doors and Electric Flag to Free You’re Mind And Win A Pony (Happy Parts Recordings), where the blues have gripped and squeezed the players and the sour mash they drip is strong and heady, throat biting as it goes down and warms your limbs. This is all great originals outside of an adaptation of Blind Will McTell’s “Turn You Round (Don’t Let Nobody),” a tune that fired up the early Steve Miller and other reefer addled white boys sippin’ at the slappin’ Mississippi in the ’60s. What’s killer diller about Golden Animals – the ark ready pairing of Tommy Eisner (electric guitar, vocals) and Linda Beecroft (drums, vocals) – is the delirious clamor they stir up and the terrific groove built into their compositions. If there’s a more instantly infectious opener than “The Steady Roller” this year I haven’t heard it – guitars snarling on a “Moonlight Drive” while tambourine shakes, snare snaps and the music moves like blood after a good tongue kiss. Eisner’s low, manly pipes and Robby Krieger-esque guitar snaking and Beecroft’s tumbling, infectious time keeping and girlishly bright voice make such a nifty environment to spend time in, regardless of whether or not you pay attention to the contents of their simmering, psychedelic, Bible touched tunes. A strongly non-traditional interpretation of the blues and an appreciation for the kind of fist in the air guitar antics that fuel AC/DC and Thin Lizzy further push this one into the winner’s circle.

Go on, try ’em on for size. Here’s the video for “The Steady Roller.”

Golden Animals – The Steady Roller from HappyParts Recordings on Vimeo.

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