Never thought we’d be typing these words but Pacific Northwest proto-garage-punk avatars The Sonics have a NEW album coming out March 31st and they will be playing the TLA on April 12th! To wit:
Recorded in “earth-shaking mono” by noted producer Jim Diamond of Ghetto Recorders at Soundhouse Studios in Seattle, “This Is The Sonics” (release date: March 31, 2015) reunites original members Jerry Roslie on keyboards and vocals, Larry Parypa on guitar and vocals and Rob Lind on sax, harmonica and vocals. They are backed by a powerhouse rhythm section, bassist Freddie Dennis (the Kingsmen, the Liverpool Five) and drummer Dusty Watson (Dick Dale, Agent Orange).
“This Is The Sonics” follows 50 years after the legendary “Here Are the Sonics” (1965) and followup “Boom” (1966), which rocketed the Tacoma garage rock band into
music history with a gritty, sped-up, brutal rock & roll attack that sounded like nothing that had come before. The Sonics singlehandedly defined the genre of garage rock with their debut single “The Witch” (1964) at a time when upbeat, positive ditties were still the standard rock fare. Instead, Roslie howled a primitive cri de coeur that took teenage desperation into far darker waters in the vein of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, with ominous, drug-soaked, even Satanic themes, anticipating punk, heavy metal and grunge in its sonic force.
Broken up in 1967, the band’s legacy remained frozen in time, with classics like “Psycho,” “Strychnine,” and “Have Love, Will Travel” awaiting discovery and directly inspiring countless generations of garage bands the world over, including names like Springsteen and Cobain. Last year “Have Love Will Travel” was used in a Modelo beer commercial as well as the promo for the 2014 season of Anthony Bourdain’s well-loved CNN series “Parts Unknown.” The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl highlighted the Sonics and interviewed Parypa in the Seattle episode of the HBO series “Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways.”
Now, “This Is The Sonics,” released on their own Tacoma-based label Revox Records, picks up where the band left off with 12 savage new songs. Producer Diamond, the Detroit force best known for his work with the White Stripes, Dirtbombs and Electric Six, recorded the new Sonics record in mono, live in the studio, with minimal overdubs, for a raw sound experience that befits their indelible legacy.
PREVIOUSLY: The Woggles are a garage band in the wooly, frat-rock party-animal tradition of ’60s bands like the Sonics. All the songs sound like steroid-fed mash-ups of “Louie, Louie” and “Shout,” and on a good night, it’s all you can do not to stand up between songs and shout, “Otis! My man!” Based in Atlanta, the Woggles are fronted by a Don Imus lookalike named Manfred Jones, who, on this night, is hands down the hardest-working man in garage rock. By the second song his sweat-soaked black tuxedo shirt is glistening like a 
seal in an oil slick. His voice wails with leathery R&B hoarsepower, and he moves like a one-man soul revue, darting from the stage to tabletops to midair, leaving behind a particle mist of spilled drinks and overturned ashtrays, not to mention a conga line of boogalooing Tritone revelers. If only the kids still had access to this kind of rock ‘n’ roll, the likes of Korn would never bother us again. MORE