The Quaketones caught me with my pants down. I had only heard about them a day before this poped up on bandcamp despite them being from New Orleans.
This is not a straightforward surf band. It's clunky, not especially wet, and there's not much of a wall of sound. I'm still not entirely sure what their instrumentation is... upright bass? Lap steel guitar? Pretty sure there's some saxophone. It's kind of a hillbilly surf sound, even with moments of a busking New Orleans jazz sound, but it's certainly coming from a surf direction, with covers of "Night of the Vampire", "Shake and Stomp" (renamed to "Steak and Chomp"), and Link's "Jack the Ripper".
It's different but it's fun and funny. Their covers of "Jack the Ripper" and "Batman" take two very energetic songs and strip them down about as bare as they get. Kind of like a Southern Culture on the Skids in a power outage.
Give it a listen-see!
