Here Are The Sonics!!! – THE SONICS**

The Witch/Do You Love Me/Roll Over Beethoven/Boss Hoss/Dirty Robber/Have Love Will Travel/Psycho/Money/Walkin’ The Dog/Night Time Is The Right Time/Strychnine/Good Golly Miss Molly

Garage rock was a musical sub genre that enjoyed a fleeting popularity in the USA during the mid 1960s. It was noted for its raw, energetic yet unsophisticated sound with heavy guitar amplification. Here Are The Sonics!!! was an early example of this phenomenon.

“Here Are The Sonics!!! is considered very influential to the development of garage rock. But helping to pioneer a burgeoning genre does not make this a great album. For starters, eight of the songs are covers, and while the lo-fi production makes this one of the earliest garage rock albums, the album is too overly derivative of 50s rock and roll to be anything really exceptional or new.”

“The production on this one is pretty raw, and there is a whole lot of screaming and loud guitar riffs. The band really had an ear for making addictive catchy melodies, and since the release is so short it manages to remain awesome from beginning to end. Perhaps one flaw is that they overdo it sometimes, otherwise it is a really fun release.”

“The Sonics are basically the missing link between Little Richard and Iggy Pop. A handful of punks from the Pacific Northwest who picked up their instruments and, with seemingly little interest in reaching any kind of mass audience, devoted themselves to playing the loudest, most ferocious rock & roll they possibly could.”

“Without the energy, a lot of these songs would be completely unlistenable. Just listen to the riffs on Have Love Will Travel and Psycho back to back. They are exactly the same. You just can't do that. This album is so dated.”

“What makes it hard for me to fully appreciate this album is the overabundance of cover songs. I realize this was standard in the 1960s, but it’s still a major turn off for me. The strength of this album is not so much in the song selection as in the raw energy of the performances.”

“When The Sonics came roaring out of Tacoma with this album, they pulled out all the stops. They did not care about making pretty love songs or serious artistic statements.”