American Minor

Good, honest rock ’n’ roll is hard to come by these days. I’m not talking about the latest hipster reinvention of classic guitar tones and fashion-shoot-ready swagger out of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg district this week, but the kind of aggressive buttrock tape-deck noise that sounds most excellent when being blasted out of a T-top Trans Am while rolling through town barking gibberish at the local skanks. This West Virginia quartet has a good handle on tight-as-a-bee’s-knees 1970s vintage riff rock: Singer Robert McCutcheon’s sandpaper throat howls somewhere between early Tom Petty and Paul Rodgers, while the rest of the band rumbles and kicks like a fine-tuned Mopar mill. The four tunes—“Walk On,” “Get On It,” “Movin’ On Up” and “Buffalo Creek”—are concise three-and-a-half-minute workouts. Where’s the album?