Boss Hoss

There are no vocals here to provide a human handhold, no lyrics to give you a story to follow — just the band, stripped down to its essential mechanism, and that mechanism turns out to be quite frightening when you hear it operating without distraction. The guitar riff is circular and almost hypnotic, hammered out with the kind of physical insistence that suggests the guitarist is trying to wear through the fingerboard. The rhythm section locks into a groove that isn't quite rock and roll and isn't quite something else — it sits in a category that the mid-sixties hadn't fully named yet, heavier and more relentless than most of what was happening around it. The saxophone pushes through the texture in sharp, almost confrontational bursts, not soloing so much as interrupting, adding dissonance right when you expect resolution. What's remarkable about an instrumental from a band this raw is that personality doesn't disappear without the voice — it concentrates. You can hear exactly who these musicians are in the way they attack their instruments, the way they refuse any kind of gentle landing. This is a song that makes physical demands on the listener, something to be played at volume that makes objects in the room vibrate slightly. It belongs at the beginning of a night that you know will not end politely.