Dead Cool

Dead Cool is simply that, or close; an approximation of studied, stone-faced cool. The title track opens with a repeated, simple bassline, occasional bursts of jangly guitar, and Peter Aaron's one-third-Mick Jagger, one-third Iggy Pop, and the other third Jeffrey Lee Pierce yelped admonitions about drugs of various types. In its less than 30 minutes, this disc, the band's second, jumps back and forth through lo-fi exercises in stripped-down garage cave-stomps, dirty guitar scraping and sliding, and too damn hip New York attitude. As occasionally studied and stilted though this album — and this band — could be, Dead Cool and the Chrome Cranks ooze with enough abandon and creativity to rise above the sunglasses-on-the-subway vibe given off by this and other releases. As a frontman, Aaron evinces enough authenticity to rise above the heap of Iggy and Jagger imitators out there, and Dead Cool offers testimony to that fact.