The Mooney Suzuki - The Maximum Black EP

Genre rock Publisher V2 Records External Links Official The Mooney Suzuki Website Official V2 Records Website

So what do you know about The Mooney Suzuki? If you were around in the early 2000s, you probably remember their name popping up along side The Strokes, The Hives, and The White Stripes, as one of the groups who was going to be saving guitar based music. As folks soon realized, the students of this new school of retro rock really didn't have much in common. The Mooney Suzuki was tearing off MC5 influenced garage soul, with a pop sensibility right out of the British invasion. Music like this was bound to fail on the charts, let alone save popular rock music. Regardless of the pop world's inability to accept their throwback material, the legendary live shows and critically acclaimed albums helped to strengthen an already healthy cult following. Still, this relative success was not enough to satiate the band and they decided to swing for the fences one more time. In 2004, the production team known as The Matrix, who at that point were most famous for building up Avril Lavigne's career, was brought on for the recording of Alive & Amplified. The album essentially crashed, their fan base balked, and the critical eye rolling was fairly universal.

Come 2006 -- after partaking in a tour put together by Little Steven's radio show Little Steven's Underground Garage -- The Moonies seem to be back on the prowl. The reissuing of their now out of print 1999 self-released Black EP, beefed up with five bonus tracks, is the best move the band could have made. The low-fi stomp of the original release remains intact and the additional tracks, recorded during the same period, don't sound as though they're tacked on. Like many of their earlier songs, this stuff would fit seamlessly on a Nuggets collection, shoulder to shoulder with the classics they've received so much inspiration from. For good reason, three of these tracks ended up on their first full length, People Get Ready, but are included here with a raw demo quality to them. Without a doubt, this is a release that any fan of garage rock will swoon over. They've turned a hard to find collectors item, into a pounding full-length. Releasing this document from their prime seems to indicate they're heading back to what they do best, but only their upcoming album will be able to confirm that bit of wishful thinking.