The Luxurious Faux Furs: Like A Real Shadow – album review

THE LUXURIOUS FAUX FURS

Like A Real Shadow

Mandinga Records

LP | DL

Out 22nd January 2021

New Orleans-based swamp garage blues duo The Luxurious Faux Furs blend all the right ingredients into a heady brew on their new album, Like A Real Shadow.

Swamp rats hitting a desert road, passing through humid nights as barcrawlers kick up dust and swagger from shack to shack. The Luxurious Faux Furs soundtrack the blues boozehounds to perfect effect on their new album, Like A Real Shadow. It’s stripped right down, simple sparse drums, a beaten fuzzed-to-full-effect twanging guitar and singer Josh Lee Hooker’s whisky-soaked drawl. The hyponitic repetetive groove of opener Don’t Throw Your Love Away slinks like a sidewinder closing in on its unsuspecting prey. There’s no rush, only intent. It’s a delta-blues Cramps-infused menace that draws you into their world over almost eight minutes, never once feeling as though its welcome has been outstayed.

They kick up the rhythm on songs like Seat In The Kingdom and Joe Bird, wailing classic garage band yelps with touches of Richard Hell permeating the former and a heavy dose of Troggs’ cranked groove. It’s not all wild things though as Send Me Your Pillow rides a gentler vibe, the guitar following the vocal melody and coming across like a lost Johnny Thunders out-take. Home Cookin’ winds over a vintage valve tremolo backing as the spritly licks simmer to the surface.

Hooker and drummer Jessica Melain are following a well-trodden path of the hypnotic stripped-down garage blues, but they pull it off wonderfully across this eight-track album. Definitely one for anyone who wants to be transported to a Lynchian desert road movie.

Like A Real Shadow is available now on Bandcamp.

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Words by Nathan Whittle. Find his Louder Than War archive here.