The Guitar Has Been Drinking

Devotees of the chicken-swinging Hasil Adkins and chicken-sucking Andre Williams will be right at home greasing up and getting down to the sleazy, swampy sound of Heavy Trash, a two-man collaboration between Speedball Baby's Matt Verta-Ray and the Blues Explosion's Jon Spencer. As lovers and instigators of fugitive roots music, both seized the opportunity to record with Williams after the soul singer's comeback in the late '90s, but their own association began when the Blues Explosion and Speedball Baby hit the road together. That delirious, intemperate combination set the stage for the unfussy, Adkins-esque outburst that was to come. Force-fed on postpunk but sunbaked in the bayou, Heavy Trash careens between distorted roadhouse R&B, murderous junkyard punk, and freewheeling fuzzabilly while still leaving breathing room for Spencer's savage croons and absurd muttered asides about Doritos, potted meat, pomade, lime rickeys, and Slim Jims. Their latest album, Going Way Out, finds the duo adventuring beyond the walls of Verta-Ray’s own über-hip analog studio NY Hed into London's Toe Rag Studios (stamping ground of Billy Childish and the White Stripes). Along the way, Canada's Sadies and members of Denmark's Powersolo and Tremolo Beer Gut contribute musical flourishes to Spencer's verbal binges.

Powersolo opens.
Wed., Nov. 14, 9:30 p.m., 2007