Pitchfork

For those who missed the Coachwhips the first time around, here's a strident howl from beyond the grave. Double Death, the San Francisco band's posthumous double release of odds and sods, sounds like the scorched remains of a searing, gung-ho noise-punk career-- in this case, that's a compliment. Difficult as it is to imagine, these rarities actually further degenerate the band's already vestigial albeit effective take on punk rock. Some studio scraps, combined with eclectic covers ranging from the Kinks to the Velvet Underground to Adam and the Ants, nicely eulogize a career that burned bright, short, and most importantly, ass-kickingly.

A half-dozen tracks of blues napalm kick off the album, which otherwise consists of blunter junkyard debris. From "Mr. Hyde"'s spiky organ alarum to John Dwyer's whiney interrogation on "ATM", the tenuous garage-rock revival comparisons ring true. Yet, unlike the White Stripes or the Hives, the Coachwhips deploy hissy, brain-dead stomps out of necessity, not aesthetic angling; they can't sound any cleaner or better. Take "The Witch", a Sonics cover, for example. Gratuitously sped up, the mix inundated with cymbal crashes, the Coachwhips render the original wholesome and Ed Sullivan-ready by comparison.

Even in the album's homogenous middle third a short-lived riff or occasional Dwyer one-liner salvages momentum. "Ringing the Chowbell" monstrously mashes garish 1960s camp rock with Dwyer's nihilist, post-punked blues croon, here sounding more mischievous than malefic. Feedback-ballad "Death Machine" finds the band farthest from their piss-and-vinegar MO, with a disintegrated Lou Reed lullaby slowed seemingly for the sole purpose of hearing overdriven guitars drowning the singsong melody in metallic squall.

Funny thing is, Double Death-- like any Coachwhips album-- remains entertaining and action-packed throughout, despite each song's over-the-top, shoot-'em-up formula. If nothing else in this world, I know two things without a doubt: Schwarzenegger will defeat an army of robot-soldiers before a final showdown with their creator, and the Coachwhips will initiate a harmless blues shuffle before immediately pulverizing it to exhilarating smithereens.