Review: Post-Punkers Algiers Find New Way to Mangle the Blues
Suggesting Birthday Party, Suicide or Public Image Limited taking a midnight leap in the mighty Mississippi, this Atlanta crew combines droogy post-punk rattle and churchy Southern roots music on their second album. Songs like “Walk Like a Panther” and “Death March” sound like they could stir the apocalypse, while the Memphis-tinged “The Underside of Power” stomps more generously. Singer Franklin James Fisher, whose multi-instrumentalist duties include everything from Rhodes to cello to sampling, is a perfect gospel shouter for our times, staring down darkness as he dances at the edge of our shared oblivion. The result is a genuinely new way to mangle the blues.