EarthQuaker Session: Hot Snakes - "Death Doula"
Aaron Rogers
Ladies and gentlemen, it is our distinct and perverse pleasure to present newly resurrected Sub Pop recording artists and The World’s Greatest Living Rock ‘n Roll Band™, Hot Snakes, performing an extra special “wet & wiggly” rendition of their interdimensional #1 smash-hit, “Death Doula,” from the album Jericho Sirens.
In the beginning, there was Swami John Reis. His slashing six-string swims in the primordial soup of the Space Spiral and Disaster Transport SR, soaking wet and dripping with modulated reverb and delay like the first prehistoric lizard-brained mutants to crawl out of the muck and onto dry land.
Meanwhile, lurking just beneath the surface, bassist Gar Wood cuts a low-end groove deeper than the Mariana with the Bit Commander, Data Corrupter, Tone Job, and the Depths, using the latter’s swirling seasick modulation to bring some extra motion to the off-kilter lurching funeral march of drummer Jason Kourkounis’ punishing percussion.
Atop it all, singer/guitarist Rick Froberg squirms his way through the song with the Hummingbird, Levitation, Night Wire, and Bows, his melodic playing like a shipwrecked seaman clinging to a scrap of driftwood floating like flotsam through bloodied shark-infested waters, his sarcastic (or are they?) quips the only sign of life amid the downtempo (for Hot Snakes, anyway) downstroke dirge of “Death Doula.”
Hot Snakes’ Jericho Sirens is available now on Sub Pop Records and at your local independent record store.
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