Shotgun for Two

Recorded on April Fool's Day 1994, a tight, stompin' mix of punky garage rock is cooked up for you by Sugar Shack on their second album. Mark Lochridge adds a sneering Iggy/Stiv Bators vocal to the raucous, moving rock & roll thrown down by the rest of the band. The Stooges' influence is polished up and displayed front and center on Sugar Shack's adaptation of the Larry & the Loafers' classic, "Let's Go to the Beach." That track has the requisites of plenty of guitar, handclaps, and whacked-out/far-gone vocals, with a touch of Screamin' Jay Hawkins thrown in. Garage rock in the '60s had different eras, and this album draws not on the psychedelia that eventually appeared, but on the angry teenage groups of the earlier period. This band is a perfect fit for the Estrus label, which, by good fortune, they finally wound up on several years later. A celebration of the good rockin' life, even seen through the haze of a damaged memory (see "Not 21"), is the order of the day.