December 18, 2009
The Dexateens
For the better part of the last decade, a band of Alabama garage rockers under the moniker the Dexateens has been bringing their self-styled “skillet rock” to an audience of music lovers that hunger for something that feeds the spirit, sets the soul ablaze, and gives the body the inspiration to jump up and dance, to witness, to testify, and sing along.
Though the line-up has changed over the years, the partnership between John Smith and Elliott McPherson is the constant that has sustained the band since its inception in Tuscaloosa in 1998 when the duo were drifting university students. Smith and McPherson not only share songwriting responsibilities, but also trade competitive guitar licks while simultaneously singing in a harmony that seems at once infused with goodwill and an almost gospel-style, good-old-boy friendship. The Dexateens first rose above their university-town, local-hero status with their electrifying second studio album Red Dust Rising, produced by cowboy punk proselyte Tim Kerr, which captured the attention of Drive-By Truckers frontman/showman Patterson Hood, who helped produce the band’s equally successful follow-up Hardwire Healing. Both Red Dust Rising and Hardwire Healing feature a sly mixture of 70’s-style Southern Stadium Rock musicality with lyrics that strike at the visceral as well as the metaphysical.
The stomping revelation “Take Me to the Speedway” asks the listener to imagine not only being dragged through “red clay” but also to imagine the uplifting and transcendental power this activity might have to “wash away the bad times.” The metaphysical conceit of being on the moon, as a metaphor for being lonesome, far from home, ungrounded, and lost in space, grabbed the attention of Paste Magazine’s New Music Sampler when they anthologized the Hardwire Healing single “Neil Armstrong,” a song that highlights the band’s ability to evoke a sort of lyrical, majestic melancholy without hindering their earthy roots-rock ethos. Thus, one might very well compare the Dexateens to Crazy Horse, or even the Band, for their ability to electrify folk music (and the listener), simultaneously administering layers of twang and crunch that illustrate the proliferate talent and multifaceted nature of the band.