Referential Garage Rock to Remind Us

It goes without saying, but there are archetypes and key reference points in rock ’n’ roll history. Some artists pay close attention to these, some ignore them and some are just not aware of them in the slightest. As new things become popular, it’s sometimes easy for a band to come along “wearing old clothes” and to carve out an audience, especially when it’s dissimilar to what’s in fashion.

Triple Hex sound like a lot of things that have come before. They sound like The Stooges, Nick Cave and The Cramps—and they sound like Velvet Underground, Bauhaus and ’60s garage. When a band conjures up so many classic sounds, a couple of questions arise: Is the band playing their favorite music and pretending it’s new? Or have they just stumbled upon a sound by way of the abilities and limitations of the players involved?

The new EP by Triple Hex is as garage as it gets. Super lo-fi with raw executions of each song—“first take” kind of stuff. The arrangements are simple and direct, largely based around guitar riffs and cyclical beats. Singer Dave Hex delivers a monotonous “I couldn’t give a lesser shit” drone, addressing sex, death and other edgy topics you might expect. It’s the perfect nihilistic, inner-city soundtrack for pissing in the alley on the way to buy drugs from some guy, and later taking some drunk chick home from a bar to fuck, only to sneak out before she wakes up the next morning.

On the other hand, perhaps Triple Hex are not thinking about any of this but simply making dirty music that they love. Perhaps a music writer somewhere is trying to justify the band’s existence by evaluating how they fit into rock history, whether they’re doing it “right” and how they might do it differently. But I’m sure that’s something Triple Hex couldn’t care less about.