Jack White is a big fan of Modey Lemon. Which is nice. Detroit and Pittsburgh are both rotting industrial wastelands posing as major metropolitan cities. Which is cool. People gush about the similarities between the White Stripes and Modey Lemon. Which is fine, even if the connections are tenuous at best. Both are from blue-collar towns. Both have only two members. Both are lumped together as compadres in the garage revival. Both have critics buzzing. But whereas Jack and Meg are steadily slipping from mysterious masters of the rock universe to pop-music piñatas, Modey Lemon still smells fresh. And the Pittsburgh duo's music is nowhere close to the calculated, streamlined stratagem of the Whites. Instead, Modey Lemon is all kinds of garage anarchy, chaotic clutter and clatter and fuzz and racket and noise, and just passionate enough to turn all that sprawl into a fine musical mess. The blues and boogie and rock and punk and what-the-hell-was-that elements to Modey Lemon distance Paul Quattrone and Phil Boyd from the other would-be garage starlets. Which is good.
