Photo by Kendra Elliot
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Triple Hex
E.P.
Release Date: January 1, 2013
Track Listing
1. Winter
2. Viking Funeral
3. Love Song
4. Deranged
5. That Ain’t Enough
6. Kill
Founded by Dave Hex in the oughts (I guess we can call that decade that now?), the Brooklyn-based band Triple Hex released their debut effort, a rockabilly-influenced EP by the name of Phantom Highway 13 in 2006 through Thigh High Records. The band followed that up with some extensive touring through Europe before they released a 3 song 7” titled, Scratch My Back, which was heavily influenced the Stooges. In between the release of the 7” and the 2008 release of their self-titled, full-length debut, Triple Hex went through several lineup changes before settling on their current lineup with Ms. Chip on electric organ and Jill McArthur on drums. Regardless of the lineup changes, it seems to be safe to say that Triple Hex has started to develop a reputation for thwarting expectations. With their latest effort, the aptly (and perhaps ironically titled) E.P., the Brooklyn-based trio have released six tracks of scuzzy, hedonistic, sex-crazed rock that manages to be simultaneously seductive and menacing. In style and substance, Triple Hex’s latest effort mirrors that of the Cummies 2007 release, The Cummies EP. In other words, much like the liner notes for The Cummies EP, the Brooklyn-based trio’s E.P. are a collection of songs to fight and fuck for – but in Triple Hex’s case, their songs to fight and fuck for, are somehow more depraved, sleazier. It’s so terribly wrong and yet so terribly right…
If you’ve lived in New York over the last decade or so, or are a native New Yorker sonically E.P. will remind you of the old New York and the old, shitty dive bars you used to spend way too much of your time and money in – joints like Mars Bar, the Library, Sophie’s, Coney Island High, Siberia, Rudy’s, the Village Idiot, and other (wonderful) dens of sin, drunkenness, and depravity. It helps that Hex croons with a drawling, somnambulant baritone that suggests a decadent, excessiveness. But I also think that the lyrics help add to that decadent, depraved feel. “I don’t want a love song/I just want to fuck,” Hex sings in the ironically titled “Love Song,” and from listening to the song it should be clear that the album obsesses about animalistic, amoral need and desire. “Viking Funeral” describes how the narrator wants a Viking funeral with a burning funeral pyre after a life of incorrigible depravity – and admittedly, it’s fucking badass if I must say myself. Opening track “Winter” sounds as though it could have been a B side to the Stooges’ “1969,” as it has stomping drums, sleazy, sludgy guitar chords and explosive peels of feedback. Rock this primal, unfettered, raw and downright sleazy is a rare thing, and for that it makes E.P. one of the most interesting releases I’ve come across so far this year.
