reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » The Ettes - Look At Life Again Soon

They are older and wiser, yet still filled with the same combustible nitrogen that kicked off their career on Shake The Dust.  Now, the Los Angeles trio (by way of Winter Park, FL) consisting of lead guitarist Lindsay “Coco” Hames, drummer Maria “Poni” Silver, and bassist Jeremy “Jem” Cohen all shine with a brilliant low-fi effort that stands up with the best of today’s garage greats from The White Stripes, to The Black Angels, to The Kills.  The return to producer Liam Watson’s retrofitted Toe Rag Studios in London, where Watson produced The White Stripes’ Elephant (and stores Abbey Road’s original mixing desk), served to preserve the integrity of The Ettes’ sound on Look At Life Again Soon.  Gone is the cleaner, plinkier, Del Ray surf rock  so prominent on Dust.  The chords are now fuzzier, dirtier, yet since the album was recorded on a practically antiquated four-track, the group’s precision is downright ninja-like.  The same can be said of the Ronette style vocals of Hames, who is coming into her own with girl power defiance in her lyrics.  “Pay It Up,” “I Got Mine,” and “(Call) To Arms” all double as forlorn teenage heartbreak melded with Pink Lady insolence, particularly with “You Can’t Do That To Me” where Hames does her best Joan Jett, pissed over being screwed over while still licking her wounds.  But, it’s the simple genius of “Crown Of Age” where The Ettes’ lyrics match wits with Jack White’s “Little Room,” by using a basic philosophical metaphor as a pop song; this time about the growing pains of finding yourself–-all evidence that rock this good is timeless.