Now, here’s a band with very little in-between about it.  I can pretty much guarantee that Frown Pow’r would either clear a room in seconds or make that room (albeit one populated by a slim selection of extremely open-minded and/or mind-altered people) erupt and sway in ecstasy. That is, if and when the band ever gets across the Arkansas border; no longer reliant upon its apparently devoted, beer-drinking coterie. Everyone knows those scenes.
Don’t Doubt It, Shout It! opens with acoustic cabaret claps and piano notes that, at first listen, could pass for any number of contemporary, usually bearded,  Americana-ish musicians. “No, boy, your babe ain’t dead,” the group attempts to reassure the song’s subject, “Bear Bryant.” It’s just open-ended enough for me to sit up straight, hoping for something beyond the norm. And this is a case when I’m glad I wasn’t careful what I wished for. The insanely shambling stomp, carousel-clownish harmonic notes, and anguished/drunk/fanatic vocals of “Stomp Wagon” bring a delighted chortle. Yeah, Frown Pow’r is molding the established boxes of Tex-Mex, gospel, folk, and garage rock into fecklessly idiosyncratic shapes… often, within one song.
Don’t Doubt It, Shout It! can feel like a memorial celebration for Hank Williams and Gene Pitney, wherein Jad Fair, Tav Falco, Don Fleming, and a drunk-out-of-his-mind Leon Russell attempt a jam. It’s the kind of jam that everyone who was there talks about for years. But when they play the recording, it’s far more distorted, incoherent, and funny than they remember. (And, although Fair and Fleming are both well represented by Thick Syrup, they’re not in Frown Pow’r.)
There’s even make-out material, of a sort, with “Keep On Clappin’,” a Merseybeat-chorded balm to anyone mourning Don Van Vliet. Only the vocals sound anything like Beefheart. But the free-wheeling form recalls his intuitive amalgam of anything he loved and wanted to put together, with passion getting the train to the depot. “KOC” would go well after Beefheart’s “My Head’s My Only House Unless It Rains.” Here, it’s followed by more whimsical guitar, on “A List of Things I Own,” which pulls out a dramatic, marching band snare motif before J.T. Tarpley (aka Flash Gurdon) sings a short, very pretty ditty that grows ragged; dissolving into dissonant guitar.
The excess that can accompany freedom is, as is to be expected in any but the more miraculous form-defying cases, here. Not everything is as wonderful as what I’ve described, and I’ve left out a few great tracks. Nevertheless, I think I’m in love. Little Rock has been added to my list of possible relocation sites. Birds of a crazee feather have to flock together, and Frown Pow’r is making lovely, wacky, funny sounds. Also, if the world as we know it is hitting a wall, I’d like to camp out in a shelter with a band that sings, “When bad things just keep on happenin’/I keep, keep, keep on clappin’.”
well written
Thanks!