Had the Flatlanders grown up in South Louisiana hanging with the Bluerunners but opting to forgo the native sounds – accordion, wash board – and instead picking a more laid-back roots rock approach, they would have sounded a lot like Tortue.
Longtime Lafayette musicians Danny Kimball, Phil Kaelin, Blake Castille and Lee Tedrow elevate guitar rock to the level of political and social consciousness with an ear for history. Being that the four members do have a combined 170 years of musical work, there is a recurring theme of growing old and dying and a take on the issues that can only come from maturity.
Throughout Play it Loud!!!, small hints of garage and surf rock make it a distinctive recording. Guitar-driven with lots of riffs but not overbearing and wild, Tortue is subdued despite what the title says. While there is a bit of variety — “Undertow” is an instrumental surf rock classic with plenty of guitar grit and squeal — the songs here stay within this roots rock range.
Tortue is a grown-up band with grown-up problems. For example, “Dirty Business” tells the drawbacks of using the military to support family and speaks against war. “Sharecropper,” inspired by Blake’s father Hadley Castille, recalls Deep South history with a very Texas sounding riff, as it details the too-hard life of a sharecropper and the generational trappings from the head of the family to the children. “TV Jive” is a deeper run at some of the points Black Flag was trying to make with “TV Party.” Here Tortue flays the non-stop barrage of terribleness coming through the wall — televangelists, war, murder and the rest of it. On “Ghost Voices,” civil rights, life and eventual death in the South provides a serious backdrop for a catchy chorus. Just to show that it’s not all serious, “Roadhouse” borrows a line from The Rolling Stones to pine for the good old days of roadhouse bars.
Lines about ya-yas notwithstanding, these songs aren’t disposable guitar anthems. Instead, Play it Loud!!! — exclamation points and all — is a rootsy rock shot across a lot of bows and the product of eight hands that know what they are doing.