This Is the Sonics
This could be the hardest-rocking album of 2015. The Tacoma, Wash.–based garage rockers’ original albums—1965’s *Here Are the Sonics* and 1966’s *Boom*—outdid their competition. Fifty years after that debut album, original Sonics members Gerry Roslie (keyboards, vocals), Larry Parypa (guitar, vocals), and Rob Lind (sax, harmonica, vocals) are backed by bassist Freddie Dennis (The Kingsmen) and drummer Dusty Watson (Dick Dale, Agent Orange) and produced by Jim Diamond (White Stripes, Dirtbombs) in what they call “earth-shaking mono”—and it’s 10 times more gloriously raw and energized than most groups one-third of their age.
This Is the Sonics is their first studio album of all-new material by the garage-rock pioneers in 49 years, but what’s even more remarkable is how one of garage rock’s most legendary bands has dared to test their legend by making a record that spits, snarls, drools, honks, wails, and screams as if it were 1966 all over again.
This Is the Sonics is their first studio album of all-new material by the garage-rock pioneers in 49 years, but what’s even more remarkable is how one of garage rock’s most legendary bands has dared to test their legend by making a record that spits, snarls, drools, honks, wails, and screams as if it were 1966 all over again.
Formed in Tacoma in the early ’60s, before rock really got weird, The Sonics secured a place in history with “The Witch,” “Psycho,” and “Strychnine”: an unholy trinity of unhinged stompers credited with spawning punk, metal, and grunge. All three feature a muddy guitar-and-sax attack and lyrics that might read like…
Formed in Tacoma in the early ’60s, before rock really got weird, The Sonics secured a place in history with “The Witch,” “Psycho,” and “Strychnine”: an unholy trinity of unhinged stompers credited with spawning punk, metal, and grunge. All three feature a muddy guitar-and-sax attack and lyrics that might read like…