Brash and relentlessly energetic, East LA’s Criminal Hygiene are a trio of snotty buds that play pop hooks in disguise, littered with loads of reverb and trenchant guitar lines. Fuzz may be the overlying element in their sound, but it’s merely an accouterment to songs that merge somewhere between blissfully ragged and straight up garage rock. Their latest self-titled LP can be described as defiant except that it also coupled with a laconic attitude, piling up one sloppy arrangement after another as if they’re unpreoccupied with the end result. But it’s also refreshingly loose in execution, trying to make sense out of different generations of rock with boundless vigor and with much more swing than its surface implies.
