Mark Sultan is BBQ of The King Khan and BBQ Show. Were he BBQ'd there'd be enough meat on offer to feed Montreal for months. $ is his latest solo LP, and gives a pretty gritty wham, bang, thank you mam for its buck. Icicles is the sound of Black Lips remodeling your garage with corrugated iron dustbin lids and tin bits as the sun heaves itself up over The Velvet Underground's Rock and Roll. Don't Look Back rumbles along like a Sergio Leone freight train bolting for jagged canyon cliffs. Ten Of Hearts is akin to The Shangri-Las' Bulldog, were its legs ravaged, left limblessly clawing towards Ben E. King's Stand By Me. Like a roughed up, estranged and snaggle toothed grubby brother to Daniel Johnston, Mark Sultan's misfit melding of doo-wop and cacophonous garage-rock, as concisely epitomised by Status, is as innately rip-roaring as a gazillion Eagles Of Death Metal excreting over endless Brighton ramshackle troupes as the pier collapses in a maritime mound of rotting wood and nondescript green gunk. I Get Nothin' From My Girl is reminiscent of a bed-bound Brian Wilson reclining in his own three year-old filth, whilst Go Berserk (available below) is Johnny B. Goode gobbled and regurgitated by The Buzzcocks as Sid Vicious snarls impatiently, awaiting further digestion. I Am The End sees proceedings turn transcendentally stadium-bound, the spirit of Bon Jovi seething through coy guitar clatters. I'll Be Lovin' You belongs in 7" jukeboxes of yore, bound for perpetual repetition as guys and dolls in bowling shoes jive platonically in disused caravans, and Waiting For Me is as mawkishly magnificent as leather liquorice. Sultan's $ is well and truly worth sparing a dime or ten on... Mark Sultan-Go Berserk by Last Gang Entertainment
