It's funny how a band's name can throw you for a loop. As it was when Karate Body Records sent me Buffalo, the new album from Kansas-based group The Midnight Ghost Train. For whatever reason, I was expecting at best rockabilly blues act, at worst some MOR indie bluster or folk bore. Not the unholy progeny of a menage a trois between Young Widows, Kyuss and Tom Waits. There is probably a better reference here - there's a song that is licking my earlobe, but I can't quite remember it, it's bloody annoying - but where blues, desert stoner rock, riff-tastic solos and some gruff mewling with an evil glint in the eye fuse together, I will surely follow. It's pretty great all round, bottom heavy to hell and back, and the slow chug of 'Tom's Trip' that explodes in the final third is worth the price of admission alone. And possibly the best covers-based about-turn in 2012 is here too in the guise of an acappella rendition of Lead Belly's 'Cotton Fields' as done by a traveling freakshow. I shit you not, Buffalo is white-hot, jampacked full of ferocity, twists and turns, worthy of a face-melting.
You can grab Buffalo here and here. Seriously, you won't find many bands with thicker rock riffs this year.
