The Ketamines - Line By Line 7"

(HoZac, 2011)

Ketamine is a drug I ain't never bothered to fuck with, because it doesn't really sound like much FUN, man. Anything that involves hallucinatory psychosis and seeing things through a pinhole isn't really my bag. So, I guess my only recourse is to live vicariously through bands like Alberta, Canada's Ketamines, who wear their dissociative allegiance on their sleeve quite literally. Brooklyn's K-Holes unleashed a debut LP on HoZac back in the spring that sounded like the Birthday Party recast as a sax-splattered surf rock band from the deeper reaches of Hades, but on this pleasantly weird single, the Ketamines present a slightly sunnier depiction of a Special K-influenced night out.

Lead-off track "Line By Line" (haha) rides a nursery-rhyme simple guitar melody punctuated by pick-slide scrapes, and that cheerful riff fights with some snidely whiny vocals, Beach Boys backing "whoos," and subliminal distorto-fuzz farts for play in the mix. It comes off like a sugar-sweet, head-bopping tune from a mutant kids show even more demented than Wonder Showzen, a place where Grover and Big Bird go line by line to get some shine in their world. "New Victims" inhabits more traditional reverb-heavy surf-rock ground, shoehorning Dick Dale western guitar wanderings and 13th Floor Elevators raunch strumming into a slightly out-of-sync and woozy stew that reaches nightmarish nirvana when the crackly fuzz organ injects itself rudely before the song crash lands. It's the best song on the EP, and it wanders close to Jesus & Mary Chain territory, if the brothers Reid had grown up on Malibu beach instead of dreary Scotland.

A trip is all fun and games until somebody loses their goddamn mind, and b-side "Dig" is where things begin to get seriously scary, dank, and interesting. A swirling, mid-tempo freakout dirge that mimics the hazy build-up of "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" mixed with Thee Oh Sees lysergic depth charges, this track has a more pronounced pitch battle between the squalling organ and psychotic guitars, taking you on a journey that sputters and lurches until the Ketamines are fused into a single person bashing around a padded cell, squirming to break out of the strait-jacket and screaming to get out. It's a perfect cliffhanger ending that makes you want another hit instantly, and since this record requires $6.95 postage paid instead of your sanity, I'd consider it a very sound investment indeed.