★★★★★
The masked bandits in Los Straitjackets kick sand in your snow with their first instrumental surf-rock holiday album, 'Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets!. Weird and contradictory by turns (check the version of Feliz Navidad done to the tune of La Bamba to hear what I mean), the heavily Ventures-influenced four-piece nonetheless gets the Christmas cocktail-hour vibe right. But I don't know if I could listen to it more than once a year - once. (Jamie O'Meara)
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-09
★★★★★
Los Straitjackets seems to have been making - and re-making - viable, new soundtracks for the 1960s cult flick Shag since 1988. The quartet is an anachronism with a loyal fanbase, and for good reason: the newest release, Supersonic Guitars in 3-D, packed with surfer guitar tunes a la Dick Dale and company, will leave sweaty, swim-suited kittens twisting poolside for sure...
- www.adequacy.net
2009-07-21
★★★★★
Just what their retro-nuevo surf instrumentals needed--singers (translating '60s hits into Spanish? One of them an Anglo anyway?) ("Hey Lupe [Hang on Sloopy]"; "De Dia y de Noche [All Day and All of the Night]").
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
The masked Nashville outfit Los Straitjackets have always been thought of as an instrumental surf-rock combo, but with their fifth album, the quartet is ready to do away with that tag. Joined by a cadre of talented vocalists -- including the Mavericks' Raul Malo, Sixpence None the Richer's Leigh Nash, ex-X frontwoman Exene Cervenka and loungeabilly freak The Reverend Horton Heat -- Los Straitjackets inject a diverse range of voices into their guitar-led assault...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Masks have always made it easier for participants in rock's athletic equivalent of professional wrestling to flit back and forth between good guy and bad guy terrain. It's only fitting, then, that rock's premier masked band should finally seize the opportunity to play dirty -- and that's exactly what they do on this, their seventh longplayer...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
I'll assume most of you aren't too familiar with the bustling metropolis of Lubbock, Texas. I wouldn't be if I hadn't spent my college years there. To be honest, I'm not sure there are many people who were meant to spend a lot of time there, beyond those born and bred in the "hub city." The locals, generally conservative (politically, and often otherwise), are polite, mostly soft-spoken and hard working...
- pitchfork.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
I'm not quite sure why surf guitar seems to inspire such devotion in some musicians. Don't get me wrong, I like it toomy collection contains discs by the Ventures, and Duane Eddy, among others. But bands like Los Straightjackets and Man or Astroman? take their love of surf music to the next levelmuch like the Cramps, who, inspired by a fierce love of old rockabilly, transformed it into something new, twisted, and weird. While Los Straightjackets' take on surf music is a bit hard to tak...
- www.popmatters.com
2009-03-21
Loading...
