Tabs Out | Blotchouts – Lenora Guards the Egg

Blotchouts – Lenora Guards the Egg

I couldn’t even imagine living in Alabama on a good day, let alone during this TIME of the COVIDs. But Blotchouts finds a way, the carnival-punk cacophony of “Lenora Guards the Egg” a greasy sparkle in the festering dirty river of human existence in the Deep South. Blotchouts probably can’t even wear a mask into the grocery store these days without the threat of getting beat up. It ain’t American to be forced to wear face coverings in public places, so anybody infringing on anybody’s freedom to walk into an establishment and NOT see a bunch of goobers covering their faces in surgical apparatus is ripe for a pounding. RIPE, I say!

Not that this has much to do with Blotchouts, or anything at all actually, and that’s before I even question my own preconceived notions of whether Blotchouts WANT to wear masks in public places. They may be the punchers instead of the punchees! At any rate, “Lenora Guards the Egg” is like listening to an itchy rash materialize on your skin and spread as far as it can before the antibiotics begin to do their dirty work. And that’s a good thing, trust me! Guitars irritate tender skin and synths squirt countermelodies like festering lesions lanced with the herky jerky rhythm section. That’s so gross! But that’s what you have to expect when you name your band anything with the word “blotch” in it – skin ailment metaphors are just par for the course here.

Skin ailment metaphors are probably par for the course in Alabama too, what do I know. You think those southerners are into songs called things like “Cockroach Milk” or “Enema”? How about “I’m a Baby”? Come to think of it, those aren’t so far-fetched. Still, the jittery jangle and abrasion of the wacky Devo’d maelstrom Blotchouts kicks up whips across the land, bursting through the borders of the Yellowhammer State and out into the great wider unknown. Weirdos getting picked up on tape decks from California to the New York island, just like Woody Guthrie promised. Did Woody Guthrie promise accessibly punk weirdness on the scale of Blotchouts when he wrote the New Testament? That’s a trick question – EVERYTHING was promised in the New Testament.

Buy Blotchouts and more, more, more from Pecan Crazy Records!