Rocking around the clock at little more than 35 minutes, dblwide's "Casa Del Fuego" (http://www.myspace.com/dblwide) is among the year's most enjoyable party records, an infectious blast of retro '50s hot rod music and rockabilly that'll shake the shack like a tsunami.
Rockabilly as a revived genre has been fairly dead since the Stray Cats, who gave it a New Wave makeover. While the Reverend Horton Heat and the Supersuckers repackaged rockabilly for the grunge generation, the musical style's melodic qualities were drowned out by the noise. Not so with dblwide. This group not only resurrects the garage-rock charms of its ancestors but their appetite for hooks and humor as well. After all, rockabilly, at one point, was music for the masses.
The CD's packaging, not to mention the loads of reverb contained within, may peer nostalgically back to the '50s, but dblwide isn't simply focused on the past. In fact, the wonderfully titled "I'm in Love with the Girl (Run Off with My Wife)" has hilariously twisted lyrics that would've never gotten on radio back in the '50s. Moreover, it almost sounds like the Violent Femmes as fronted by Stan Ridgway of Wall of Voodoo, a death-country ballad about lesbian love. "Friday Night" has the jumpy energy of the Supersuckers without the brain-pounding volume.
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"Blue Yodel No. 4" features electrifying surf riffs and yodeling that actually doesn't annoy the listener. Lyrically, like everything else on the album, it's not communicating anything deep; it's not supposed to. This is music to drink and dance to. Open up and say ah.
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