Every now and then we need something to shake up the illusion of sanity we live in; turning a kaleidoscope of wonderfully psychedelic 60's pop with hints of the Doors and the Rolling Stones, The Siam Cats evoke the sights and sounds of the age with a new wave appeal that might have you turning your head to look for an escaping Billy Idol. Having shared the NYC stage with musical comrades such as The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and others, this band will give you a run for your sobriety.

Whether you’re a pub-rock band or not, all thoughtful musicians must ultimately arrive at the same understanding: in a group, the drummer handles the accelerator and the brakes, the bass player steers, and the singer navigates. Everybody else is backseat driving. That’s not to say that guitar is unimportant – it can be as exciting and engrossing as any other treble instrument when it’s used properly. To use a basketball metaphor, the guitar should be a small forward who comes off the bench, provides instant offense, gives the team a pick-up, and then gets the hell out of the way. Stan Blackett of the Siam Cats is a gifted guitar player, and part of that gift is his unerring knowledge of when to stop playing. Like the Realistics, these guys have a head start because of their chosen antecedents – as surely as Dos Santos and Patrikios are echoing Nick Lowe, the Jam, and Squeeze, the Cats follow Bowie, T. Rex, and Forever Changes into relatively spacious arrangement territory. Pietro Scorsone’s gorgeous Vox Continental, recorded with the appropriate period reverb, dominates most of these mixes with a sound that is frequently more haunted-house than carnivalesque. Blackett doesn’t play on The Siam Cats, instead ceding guitar responsibility to the glam-rocking Joshua Taggart (check out the fork-bending lead on "With You") and Girl Harbor’s ubiquitous and protean Jimmy Spoiler. He does, however, sing all ten proper songs, performing with an emotional elasticity that allows him to discharge everything from the Love-debonair "Courtyard" and an inspired cover of Smokey Robinson’s "Get Ready" with genuine aplomb. "How you turn me to stone with your eyes/and how you take me under", he sings on the Bolan-to-the-letter "Cheetah", with a deft slur and an acid twinkle, perfectly matching the period specificity of Brashear/Scorsone’s track. Like Gene Dreamy and Gary Sincere, the group’s claim to revivalist authenticity is more than backed up by an intimate knowledge of the formal features of past genres – but unlike the would-be flower-power duo, The Siam Cats refuse to brook anything that feels like an anachronism. Scorsone, Blackett, and co-writer Micah Brashear would sooner pawn their copies of Aladdin Sane than bow to the adoption of a production aesthetic that wouldn’t have fit the needs of their sources. It’s easy to knock purists, sure, but these days, if the alternative is capitulation to the B-DARG (Big Distorted Ass Rhythm Guitar), I’m happy to assist in the scrupulous revival of any genre that avoids it.

Every now and then we need something to shake up the illusion of sanity we live in; turning a kaleidoscope of wonderfully psychedelic 60's pop with hints of the Doors and the Rolling Stones, The Siam Cats evoke the sights and sounds of the age with a new wave appeal that might have you turning your head to look for an escaping Billy Idol. Having shared the NYC stage with musical comrades such as The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and others, this band will give you a run for your sobriety.