by Mark Deming
The Bloody Hollies don't stray dangerously far from the fast/loud/hard sound that dominated their first two long-players on album number three, the brilliantly titled Who to Trust, Who to Kill, Who to Love, but at the same time this is certainly the group's most ambitious and accomplished set to date. Along with the garage punk blama-lama that's their bread and butter, the Bloody Hollies add some dashes of hard rock guitar swagger and glam-styled attitude on these ten tunes, and the moody organ intro to "Mona" kicks off the show with more texture and detail than you might expect from these guys. But don't let the new layers of depth and occasional subtlety throw you -- the Bloody Hollies are still here to rock the house, and they shake it to its foundations on this record, with the slightly more measured tempos of "Black Box Blues" and "C'Est la Vie, Ma Chérie" revealing just how much muscle this trio can summon without breaking the speed limit. Who to Trust, Who to Kill, Who to Love takes what was great about the Bloody Hollies' first two albums, refines the formula, adds some solid new accents, and ends up with a killer album that has brains, muscle, and sweat in equal measure.