Restaurant

Holy Cotton Eye Joe, Batman! Is that a Southern rock foot-stomper stitched onto a drum machine beat? Sho’ nuff is and what’s umpteen times less likely is it doesn’t suck! Restaurant are Troy Olaf Murrah and J. State coming to you straight outta Victoria, TX, settling in California to rock the strips and confuse the locals. However, the hickster-to-hipster balance actually tips the skill the duo apply to making their cyber-age trance blues shine brightly. If Fat Possum label-mates Bob Log and Junior Kimbrough had ever gotten together such a sound might have been forged. But it’s a mould they aren’t afraid to stretch and smash on mellow, tear-in-beer tracks like "Nadia” or the Califone-worthy "Lionman.” The meat and potatoes of the affair are nitro-charged getaway tracks that jerry-rig crumpled license plate percussion to washtub drum machine beats. Toss in slide distortion and you got yourself some good BBQ, I tell you what.