The Deadcats
Look Like Hell (Flying Saucer)

Let’s get one thing straight: these aren’t the same Deadcats who prowled Vancouver in the mid ’80s. Nor, for that matter, are these the same four guys who revived the name in the mid ’90s. The band’s turnover rate over the years has been such that there are currently no original members from either incarnation playing under the Deadcats banner. Or maybe there are—it’s hard to keep track when everyone uses pseudonyms.

It doesn’t really matter who’s doing what, though, since the basic formula hasn’t changed a lick. Rockabilly is the ruling aesthetic, with occasional detours into surf and country. The Deadcats like to throw the word psychobilly around, but that implies a certain degree of wildness and switchblade-edge danger that Look Like Hell doesn’t really display. The 12-bar–blues progressions and twangy, reverbed guitars are all pretty standard stuff, and the Deadcats’ approach is so resolutely laid-back that, well, the Cramps they ain’t.

Still, there are plenty of nice things happening here. Guest six-stringer Paul Pigat contributes some sweet, straight-outta-Sun-Studio lead guitar to “Hank’s Cadillac”, and the band’s own Gorehound adds some great lap-steel flavour to “Goin’ to Memphis” and “Rocket to the Moon”.

The Deadcats show off their surf-rock chops with a lounge-y version of “Apache” that might be the slowest take ever on the iconic instrumental. But that’s okay. It would probably go down really well after a few beers on a Saturday night at the Railway Club, and I can’t help but think that’s how everything the Deadcats do is meant to be heard anyway.

Download This: "Goin' to Memphis"