The Entrance Band
Guy Blakeslee has come a long way since his days as a teenage bassist for avant-punk outfit The Convocation Of. The one-time Baltimore native now fronts the Entrance Band, a trio proffering unholy late '60s-style hard rock, with maybe a touch of '90s indie-blues. Think Jon Spencer Blue Cheer Explosion and think real, real loud.
Entrance wasn't always such a cacophonous beast. When Blakeslee quit the Convocation Of in 2001, he opted to strip down his music, looking to the pre-war country-blues tunes of Charley Patton, Mississippi John Hurt, and Skip James for inspiration. His 2003 Tiger Style solo release, The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken By Storm, featured covers of James and early Bob Dylan, while the follow-up EP, Honey Moan, included a soulful version of Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen." A young white indie dude playing folk-blues can seem affected and overwrought, but Blakeslee pulled it off, mainly because of his obvious appreciation for the sound, as well as his distinctly wrenching voice (and a right-handed guitar playing style that came from flipping his axe over and strumming with his left hand).
For 2004's Fat Possum album Wandering Stranger, Blakeslee filled out his sound by adding violinist Paz Lenchantin (bassist for Billy Corgan's Zwan) and drummer Tommy Rowse to the band. The tracks uncovered the spooky power and ethereal wonder of the blues, taking Blind Willie McTell and Townes Van Zandt numbers to new planes of existence. Not surprisingly, the LP led to tours with Cat Power and Devendra Banhart, as Entrance got lumped in with the Arthur Magazine freak-folk crowd.
But Entrance's music became something altogether fresher with 2006's Prayer of Death (out on Tee Pee Records, home of hard rocking Bay Area outfits like Drunk Horse and Assembled Head in Sunburst Sound). Featuring Lenchantin on bass and various stringed instruments and new drummer Derek James, the record was an explosion in volume, taking off from the blues extrapolations of late-'60s outfits like Cream and Iron Butterfly. Where Blakeslee would coo and murmur in the past, now he howled like a devil was on his trail, his vocals lacquered in a blood bath of reverb (by up-and-coming Chicago producer David Vandervelde). Allegedly inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Timothy Leary, Blakeslee's lyrics took mortality to new extremes, offering heady chestnuts like "While my head's in the sky/ Your head's in the grave." And the music, once so minimal and haunting, now attacked listeners like a taunted tiger, beating a psychedelic pathway to their skulls. Watch out, Jon Spencer, this is one explosion you don't want to get in the way of. By Dan Strachota
