Oakland trio B. Hamilton are into dirty blues garage rock, with a touch of shoegaze and psychedelica. Their album Everything I Own is Broken sounds like the MC5 rhythm section making love to the Black Keys. Singer Ryan Christopher Parks: has the sandpapered voice that is tailor-made for noise pop at its finest. It is a safe bet to assume that drummer Bill Crowley and bass player Andrew Macy have worn out their copies of The Stooges' LPs.
Surpisingly melodic underneath all the bravado this band taps into the darker niches of classic rock and guitar loving indie acts that like to push their amps and shit to the limit. Stand-out track Miss Carolina is augmented with a great bottleneck guitar on top of the in-your-face kick drum. It's not all loud as fuck. Oakland and Anaheim (Ain't Divided by the 5 Tonight) is a solo acoustic showcase for Parks, singing about youngsters that have been gunned down by the police.
The mastering skills of Matthew Tammariello preserved the bleeding and leakage, and only murky when the song requires it. Hillary Overberg (violins), Caleb Nichols (bass), Erika Pipkin (Wurlitzer) found their way into the core of the trio, without sounding out of place.
B. Hamilton:
Bill Crowley: drums
Andrew Macy: bass
Ryan Christopher Parks: vocals, guitar
Everything I Own is Broken is released on Parks and Records. Full stream on Bandcamp.
Tracks:- Me and Margaret Counting Countdowns
- Miss Carolina
- Gold Tooth
- Between the Gutters and The Ballrooms
- Outside a Hexagram
- Everything I Own is Broken
- Turn Out the Lights
- Dolltime (for Swans and Bulldozers)
- Now or Eventually
- On Borrowed Time
- Oakland and Anaheim (Ain't Divided by the 5 Tonight)
- Everything I Own is Broken (Fixing Fucked-Up Shit Version)
- 05/18 Uptown Nightclub, Oakland, CA
- 08/09 Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, CA
» B. Hamilton on Facebook
