“I fucking stink. I smell like Honky laundry.”
That was pretty much the first thing Sasquatch bassist Clayton Charles said to me. I can remember this clearly almost four months after the fact because he did indeed stink. The Los Angeles-based band was at Mad Oak Studios in Boston, Massachusetts recording their sophomore album last December, and they weren’t fucking around. The band – Clayton, guitarist/vocalist Keith Gibbs, and drummer Rick Ferrante – and producer Craig Riggs (Antler, Roadsaw) had one weekend to nail down nine songs, so trivial things like personal hygiene fell by the wayside.
But based on what I heard, it was a worthy sacrifice. While their self-titled debut was a compilation of songs written since the band formed in 2001, the new album (tentatively titled II) reflects a band that’s become a strong power trio, one that’s played their collective ass off night after night. Sasquatch takes a love of classic rock – AC/DC, Cactus, Uriah Heep, among others – and shellacs it with a thick coating of fuzz’d out distortion. The grooves are tighter, the hooks are sharper than ever, and it’s shaping up to be one of the best rock albums of 2006.
Unfortunately, thanks to the medicinal marijuana Keith passed around, a good number of the shots I took wound up as blurry as my vision. What you get here are the best of the lot.
Sasquatch
Recording at Mad Oak Studios
(Click photos for larger versions)
