Double Naught Spy Car
Comb in Blue Water (11-Ft. Pole Records 001)

Double Naught Spy Car rides a precarious space of coolness between surf rock, jazz, and (dare I say) country, offering up a highly original sound that puts them quite a bit above the typical tremolo-twanger instrumental combo of the 90s.

Oh, wait, it's the 00s. Well, then, there's no better time for the Double Naught Spy Car, I'd say. This LA four-piece is tight as I wish my abs were, and with titles like "jan-michaelvincentrehab.com," "The Rube Cubist," and "Arrangement With a Dung Beetle," hip without coming off as simply "retro."

The instrumentation consists of two guitars, bass, and drums – but lead guitarist Paul Lacques plays pedal steel most of the time, giving the slow numbers instant flair and the fast ones a crazy zing that you're just never going to get out of a Telecaster. This stuff is just screaming to be used on film soundtracks. For every time some thinking-well-inside-the-box filmmaker uses "Miserlou" or something to add "zip" to their movie, it would be nice for someone with real taste to use something like DNSC's take on Ellington's "The Mooche."

Slinky, unpredictable, and above all, constistently interesting. Few contemporary instrumental groups can hold my interest for the run of a full album, but I am digging Comb In Blue Water quite mightily.

Most of the cuts swim around in the minor-key moodiness you'll find in David Lynch movies, and are about as enigmatic. There's a great deal of cleverness happening, though it's pretty subtle ("Out Walked Bud/In Walked Bud" marries a DNSC original to the Thelonious Monk standard, with nice continuity).

The disc is well-paced, alternating the slink-twang stuff with the more jagged fast-paced stuff so that it never ends up sounding too samey, despite the instrumentation being the pretty much the same on each track. The pedal steel really adds a lot to this kind of music, giving it a Ry Cooder-meets-Zappa kind of feel. A tad Hawaiian and a bit like an earth-bound Man or Astroman?.

By the time the disc hits the end of (the rather unfortunately titled) "Deutsch Bag," with its woozy banjo-flavored fade-out, you're feeling a little sloshed and dizzy, but it's a happy drunk. You'll sleep it off and want to come back for more, guaranteed.

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Review by Lula Babcock