Sweat and sex are like the peanut butter and jelly of carnal thought. Though no one likes to admit it, our animal instincts have a sweet spot for perspiration. Sadly, most present-day rock music prefers to remain arid, rather than drenched in its own nastiness, which is part of the reason it has mutated into such an unsexy beast.
But this is why Seattle’s Thee Emergency is so important. Though the members could easily get by on their greasy riffs and sultry croons alone, they rise above the Detroit-lites by saturating their recorded material with the same sweat that drips from their brows and flies from their Rob Tyner fros onstage. Over the last couple years, the quartet of Dita Vox, Sonic Smith, Nick Detroit, and Tom T. Drummer have burned countless calories on nearly every local stage imaginable, fast becoming one of our prized possessions for their chest-thumping energy and bombastic stage presence. That same intensity even caught the ear of neo-garage knobster Jim Diamond, who offered to produce their debut long-player, Can You Dig It?, a powerhouse disc that should lay waste to all garage newbies. Every track is like a cocktail of Stooges/BellRays/Stonesy swagger, and Vox’s gospel-inflected wailings suggest she and her band are ready for local domination. For anyone who has complained about the dry aftertaste of recent garage rock, their prayers have been answered.
