Album Review: Century Plaza by Dan Sartain

British electro-pop and Suicide missions from Alabama. Although Sartain hails from Alabama and has moved in blues circles, the New York gutter ghost of Suicide and Britain’s Depeche Mode hovers over his latest album in the vulnerable vocals, electronic pulses and glacial melodies..

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Alabaman Dan Sartain first made his name around the same time as The White Stripes – occasionally supporting them, even recording at Toe Rag. But he always traded in an edgier, rawer, more Hasil Adkins-influenced version of the blues and rock’n’roll, his live shows perpetually in borderline states of collapse. But his 10th album heralds a complete change.

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Since the early 2000s, Alabama's Dan Sartain has plied his trade in the indie underground, crafting his image as a sort of lo-fi grifter with a noir-ish, Cramps-ian bent. Exuding an aura of danger and charm, his sly mix of punk, garage, and rockabilly has led to big tours with heavy hitters like the White Stripes and the Hives, yet he remains a cult figure at best. Every now and then, he shakes up the formula, stretching out into new territories like lounge, spaghetti western, and even mariachi, but for the most part, he's kept at least one foot in the arena of garage-oriented guitar rock.

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Dan Sartain — Century Plaza (One Little Indian)Dan Sartain first recorded “Walk among the Cobras” on 2005’s Vs. the Serpientes in a goth-tinged rockabilly style that hinted at hollowed-out desolation, but also twitched with guitar-driven hedonism. The version on Century Plaza is slower, sparer and immeasurably bleaker. There’s not a guitar to be heard on this track or seven out of eight of the others, and instead Sartain works in the dystopian registers of new wave.That’s a big shift away from what Sartain is usually associated with i.e., sweat-soaked, stripped down garage punk, a la “PBC ‘98” from Swami Sound System Vol.

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