Press release -
The Luxurious Faux Furs: NOLA's enigmatic swampy rock 'n' roll duo prep new LP release
The Luxurious Faux Furs are an enigmatic rock n roll duo based in New Orleans, Louisiana.
They are beloved, mistrusted, idolized, ignored, puzzled over, and derided for their conceptual marriage of quasi-European glamour and droning, swampy rock n roll.
Since their beginning in 2011 (supposedly in New York City), Luxurious Faux Furs have stripped their vision of garage rock down to the bone. Over the course of two LPs and a handful of seven-inches, Jessica-Melain (drums) and Josh Lee Hooker (guitar) approach their music with the howling, elemental minimalism of the Gories and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Yet they also embody the opulent absurdity of 70’s glam rock (a la Cockney Rebel), with stretched out songs, copious “ooh ooh” backup singing, and expressionistic vocals. Their records have been issued by labels in Western Europe, South America, and Memphis, Tennessee.
On their new LP, LIKE A REAL SHADOW (Mandinga Records), the pair maintains their garage squall and dives even further into hypnotic blues riffs and throbbing insistent drum pulse—what one listener called the “car with one square wheel” rhythm. Their choice of cover songs—obscure blues and sanctified numbers—show them moving even further from anything like “listener expectations.”
Playing live on stage, the band cuts a memorable image. Behind her pair of stand-up drums, Jessica-Melain swings her hips in time to the trance-like beat. Her hair is a big black thunder cloud with blonde streaks of lightning; her expression a bubblegum snarl. Meanwhile, Josh Lee Hooker, saturnine and overdressed, mutters confusing jokes to the audience then abruptly careens into impassioned, expressive singing.
The Luxurious Faux Furs are defiantly un-modern and anti-traditional; they’re neither urban nor rural; they have no interest in “what’s going on” and they certainly don’t care what people say about them.
Recent Press:
“A taste without moderation … their music breathed at night, red neons and black glasses” -- Idiocratie (France)
“Reckless, feared and dangerous … pernicious and libidinous … bloodthirsty … dirty as hell” -- Tremendo Garaje (Argentina)
“Mainman Josh Lee Hooker and standing lady drummer Jessica Melain ply a hazy delta/sexy blues vibe that doesn’t really sound like much else.
“Trashy blues and a singer that seems to channel Hasil Adkins’ insanity. You’d be forgiven for thinking this duo recorded their tunes on a two-track in a Louisiana shed half-sinking in an alligator-infested swamp.” -- Bananas Magazine (Spain)
“[T]hey combined their stripped down sound with energy, bluesy vocals and magnetic stage presence.” -- Voodoo Tattoo Magazine (UK)
"There's a band here called The Luxurious Faux Furs. They're a husband-n-wife duo micro-band version of the FleshEaters." -- overheard on the street in New Orleans
“[The Luxurious Faux Furs are] questions that have taken unto themselves shape ... and answers that are pregnant with questions. Only fools see it otherwise." -- Gustav Meyrink (Austria)
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