Bam! Hits you right between the eyes, this one. I mean a proper, full-on swinging punch of an opener in ‘Cookin’ With Gas’, with its doo-wop kiss-me-quick harmonies, full-fat horn section, whammy-bar lead guitar, thumping, jumping, finger-clicking double bass, and a roaring vocal that croons and yells and hollers like it’s standing on the table, your table, in a sleazy bar in a sleazy East Coast town (and I don’t mean Hull).  
   
Gas House Gorillas hail from New Jersey and wear leather caps and kilts, alchemists on a mission to jump between this and that, that and this, and the best of the rest. I love this record. I love it because it’s irreverent but polished, a hybrid of rock ‘n’ roll mixed up in a big bowl with punk, a side order of jazz-strum and a fierce and melodic second helping of untamed guitar. A good old mess of a sound.  
   
A decade ago I saw Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry on the same bill in a tatty club in Bradford. They must have been several hundred years old, but they ripped up the pace. They reminded me that rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t just an outdated twelve-bar chord progression and a quaff but something primal and gut-felt, poetic and beautiful.  
Like this album, in fact.  
   
Boff Whalley  
R2 (Rock'n'Reel) Magazine, January 2016