My Feral Kin

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More About

• Sam Gerhard
• Chase Kamp
• Carly Henrickson

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There's a moment on The Blackened Flat Tax — a 30-minute effort by the rock-heavy, world-music-fortified Phoenix-based band — when we experience some serious chills (this is our body's positive, uncontrolled reaction to music that really wows us). The goose bumps start to form at the beginning of "Long Sinner," when Carly Henrickson's slightly-behind-the-beat background vocals meld perfectly with Julio Cesar Mendoza's island-tinged guitar lines, guitarist/vocalist Sam Gerhard's infectious musicality, and Chase Kamp's well-stated drum time. When the shakers chug along with the foot-tapping groove and an overdub of Nick Eymann's sweeping "found sounds" enters our consciousness, the temporary pimples are more defined. This, My Feral Kin's second album, is filled with these instances, including "Coal Heart," a limb-contorting, head-nodding tune featuring organic guitar loop passages and bandleader Mendoza's falsetto-approaching, damn-he-did-not-just-say-that-lyrics: "That hunk of coal beneath your chest gives you flavor/To pump that soot and velvet trash down to your toes/Well I should have known that you were no queen."