Although the trio currently calls Brooklyn home, Awesome Color started out in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Singer/guitarist Derek Stanton even grew up across the street from Scott Asheton of the Stooges. Their original environment shows.
Awesome Color sounds like an early punk behemoth, a combination of the influences of early Michigan punk pioneers Iggy and the Stooges and The MC5. Each track is an exploration into dirty, gratuitous guitar riffs and decadent protopunk rock and roll. The album opens up with a straight-up dirty riff on "Grown", and by the time Stanton starts singing, you can feel the influence of the Stooges. From then on, there's no letting up as Awesome Color drives their way through track after track of loud, powerful rock. Aside from a few appearances by saxophones and one by a harmonica, the band pulls off this big sound as a trio. The album was produced by Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), and produced the perfect amount. Much of the sound is just a little muddy, in a way that helps the big rock sound, but it's never so low-fi that you can't hear distinctions in the instruments. It works - if it were any crisper, it would probably be a bit cheesy, any muddier, and it would not be worth listening to.
One of the best tracks on the album, "Hat Energy", combines a fast riff with some frantic sax playing and some goofy lyrics (again, classic Stooges); it's immediately followed by "See You Hear You", which instantly sounds like an old Black Sabbath tune. But it's all done with a fresh energy; when the music evokes images of these bands, it's as they were in their prime, not as aging rock dinosaurs. The only weak track on the album, "Animal", is a seven-minute largely instrumental track that sounds like a free form improvisational jam. While gratuitous guitar noise are what make this album so good, this one is a little too gratuitous. Even so, I'm willing to bet that "Animal" sounds great live, especially if it's as improvisational live as it sounds on the album, and is played with a fresh take every time. If you weren't around for the birth of The Stooges or MC5, check these guys out. They are young, fresh, wild and loud, and provide a peek at the very early days of American punk rock.
