Band:	Clutch
Album:	Earth Rocker
Style:	Hard rock, Stoner rock
Release date:	March 19, 2013
A review by:	wormdrink414

Disc I
01. Earth Rocker
02. Crucial Velocity
03. Mr. Freedom
04. Night Hag [Deluxe Edition bonus]
05. D.C. Sound Attack!
06. Unto The Breach
07. Gone Cold
08. The Face
09. Book, Saddle, And Go
10. Cyborg Bette
11. Oh, Isabella
12. Scavengers [Deluxe Edition bonus]
13. The Wolf Man Kindly Requests...

Disc II [Earth Rocker Live] [Deluxe Edition bonus]
01. Earth Rocker
02. Crucial Velocity
03. Mr. Freedom
04. D.C. Sound Attack!
05. Unto The Breach
06. Gone Cold
07. The Face
08. Book, Saddle, And Go
09. Cyborg Bette
10. Oh, Isabella
11. The Wolf Man Kindly Requests...

Disc III [DVD: Live In Denver] [Deluxe Edition bonus]
01. Earth Rocker
02. Crucial Velocity
03. Mr. Freedom
04. D.C. Sound Attack!
05. Unto The Breach
06. Gone Cold
07. The Face
08. Book, Saddle, And Go
09. Cyborg Bette
10. Oh, Isabella
11. The Wolf Man Kindly Requests...

As with all the finer things, there are highly specific do's and don'ts when it comes to pairing Clutch discs with booze. Toss on The Elephant Riders, say, and you won't want to reach for a fifth of rum--that would be exceedingly barbaric of you--save that for their self-titled. Rather, if you want to be a human being and complement the wobbly sloshing-ness of its tunes, you should grab some mugs of a strong American pale ale. The combination will, take my word, lead to quivering liver orgasms of only the highest, most cultivated orders.

Going with Beale Street? You've got to go with bourbon--a lot of bourbon, and bourbon on its own. Jam Room? Mini martini glasses of LSD should suffice. Strange Cousins? Three fingers of scotch with a couple splashes of water. And so on.

Earth Rocker, like their 2004 album Blast Tyrant, will mix with any of the above and it'll mix with a lot more. And not just booze--it'll complement a nice walk about or a workout or a drive, it could go with a sprightly, surreal bedroom romp with your loved one, or a hearty soul food meal, etc.

I'm fond of almost every Clutch album, but some of them are definitely more cohesive than others. And this is definitely, after non-stop spins since I got it, one of their more cohesive albums. It sports a blend of what it seemed they'd aimed for with Strange Cousins and of what they achieved with Pure Rock Fury, adding a fair bit of further road-refined songwriting to it all. You hear Clutch at or at least near their best on this.

Part of that's due to the return of Machine, the guy who did the mixing and whatnot for Blast Tyrant, but it's also due to the blues bug burrowing deeper and masking itself more adeptly than it had on their more recent albums. It's still there and shows itself off proudly on, say, "Gone Cold," but it works its magic more subtly on this. It'll be on any real rock and roll album for sure, but these guys really emphasized its presence on Beale Street, and that emphasis didn't entirely go away on Strange Cousins. Now it's more evenly spread among what makes Clutch so damn fun: namely, hard-hitting, chunky and groovy rock n fucking roll. Which, coupled with Neil's trademark, liberal applications of the surreal and references to the mythological, provides a perfect soundtrack to crank as you and your wolf man friends roar speedily past peacekeeping agents from several futures in your car... or for when you just feel like rocking out. This is Clutch breaking their formula down to pure, brass tacks rock fury.


Stand outs: "Cyborg Bette," "Crucial Velocity," "Book, Saddle, and Go," and "Unto The Breach."