Four-piece Middle Tennessee rock group The Weird Sisters has captured a great variety of styles, instruments, vocals, feels and tempos with a fun, funky swagger to it all on its self-titled 2019 release, available now.
The collection travels, track by track, from powerful rock riffs and hip-hop influenced beats both acoustic and synthesized to spacey, ethereal guitar picking, deep electronic fuzz and downtempo, Pink Floyd-esque excursions.
The Weird Sisters demonstrates its wide variety of influences and musical directions while keeping a quirky sense of humor.
I’m goin’ down to Texas, gonna get myself some toast, Izaac Short belts out on “Texas Toast,” a track that begins maybe a little too much like “Purple Haze” but then takes on a personality of its own as Short rips loose on a screeching guitar solo (more within the Jack White sphere of influence) and Gabrielle Lewis contributes the warm, vintage sounds of her Fender Rhodes keyboard.
“The Improbable Beat” goes in a more funky rap direction as Lewis, that weirdo with wings on her feet, makes sure all knows she’s the host with the most.
I got helium in my veins, helium in my veins . . .
Lewis busts out the saxophone on “John Coffey Style” and “The Martian Queen,” further demonstrating her impressively broad musical abilities.
The Weird Sisters album begins with an intense hard rock riff, almost Tool-like. The female vocals and feel of the verse calm that opening track, “Masterminder Rewinder,” a bit, but it later later picks back up into some rock ’n’ roll throwdown.
“Can’t Stop the Sound,” which also features some sax, is tame but groovy. “Will You Be Mine?” can first seem a little draggy, but wait for it, as the song builds to epic proportions while still keeping its slow tempo a la Floyd.
The classic rock fan has to appreciate those warm, vintage electronic piano sounds. The quartet does a nice job melding 1960s rock with modern sensibilities and gadgets, blending mellow and warm with more harsh distortion and phasing sounds, the delicate with the abrasive, slow beats with hard rock guitars.
It’s not too serious, but seriously funky.
Space, space the final frontier, there’s plenty of girls and there’s lots of beer.
Check out The Weird Sisters on Spotify or Bandcamp or at theweirdsistersband.com.
