Missouri quartet Powder Mill make grizzled Southern rock that you need to hear. (Photo courtesy of the artist.)
Especially frontman Jesse Charles Hammock II. Over the 13 tracks of “Money, Marbles and Chalk,” he moans, groans and growls about his pharmaceutical diet, huffing paint thinner, coping with PTSD and a getting nailed with a DWI. Sometimes the only thing propping him up is guitarist Jeff Chapman, who solos like he’s mapped the Slash genome.
A year later, Powder Mill’s new live album, “Live in Carter County,” finds the band basking in a hometown roar that should only grow louder and more widespread.
Together, they visit Kraftwerk’s android dreamscapes, a Stereolab scrapbooking party and eventually dart off into a great, new agey unknown.
That doesn’t make much sense, but neither does the sound of Gucci rapping alongside Future, the summer’s most ubiquitous Auto-tuned rapbot made famous by his rhymes on the YC hit “Racks.” Here, Future is mere sonic wallpaper and completely absent from the the mixtape’s finest cut, “Go For It.” Of course, Gucci buries it at the very end of the tracklist. Stay weird, sir.
