Cramps "Songs The Lord Taught Us" LP

• The Cramps' full-album debut produced by Alex Chilton - rockabilly sex-stomp, originals like "TV Set" and "The Mad Daddy," dripping with threat and desire.
• For fans of: The Sonics, Gun Club, Hasil Adkins, Reverend Horton Heat, The Meteors

Continuing the spooked-out and raging snarls of their Gravest Hits EP, the Cramps once again worked with Alex Chilton on the group's full-album debut, Songs the Lord Taught Us. The jacket reads "file under: sacred music," but only if one's definition includes the holy love of rockabilly sex-stomp, something which the Cramps fulfill in spades. Having spent Gravest Hits mostly doing revamps of older material, the foursome tackled a slew of originals like "The Mad Daddy" and "TV Set" this time around, creating one of the few neo-rockabilly records worthy of the name.

Years later Songs still drips with threat and desire both, testament to both the band's worth and Chilton's just-right production. The covers of the Sonics' "Strychnine" and Billy Burnette's "Tear It Up" all challenge the originals. Interior has the wailing, hiccuping, and more down pat, but transformed into his own breathless howl, while Ivy and Gregory keep up the electric fuzz through more layers of echo than legality should allow.