THE BELLRAYS
Hard Sweet and Sticky
(Anodyne)
By Todd Lavoie
Who exactly, pray tell, are these foolish Southern California boys who keep playing careless games with Lisa Kekaula’s heart? As the don’t-mess-with-me diva at the forefront of the BellRays’ unbridled soul/punk whirlwind, Kekaula has been bearing witness to the trials and tempests of love for nearly two decades, and Hard Sweet and Sticky finds the R&B shredder fighting yet another round of bedroom drama.
Here, on their eighth album, the Riverside band’s familiar Tina Turner/MC5 union is as fuzzy and furious as ever, but it is their willingness to veer beyond the usual garage bluster that makes the disc such a tremendous leap forward. Articulating matters of the heart with broader range than ever before, the BellRays have released the defining album of their career thus far.
For those who have always sought righteous liberation from the group’s combustible marriage of Kekaula’s soul-belting vocals with skuzzy ’69-Detroit chug-o-ramas, fret not: “Psychotic Hate Man” throttles as much as the title suggests, and the roughneck-bass and chanted hey’s of “Pinball City” make for certain manic nirvana.
“Wedding Bells,” however, is atmospheric noir-blues winnowed by Kekaula’s moist-eyed sighs and whispers, and the post-break-up move-on of “Blue Against the Sky” is ravishing straight-up soul, without a feedback swell in sight. The smoothness prize, though, goes to “The Fire Next Time,” a satin-and-silk slice of deception stroked by erotic ripples of come-hither jazz guitar but tempered by Kekaula’s knowing, regretful murmur: “How can I love you if you’re the hurting kind?”