Endless Boogie: Full House Head
Like a far artier, latter-day, East Coast version of Thin Lizzy or early ZZ Top, New York’s Endless Boogie has been dishing out basic hard rock with a minimum of flourishes but plenty of soloing. The difference—and this is where the band’s artiness comes in—is that Endless Boogie isn’t especially concerned with songs, though its fourth album has some good ones, such as the choppy stomp “Mighty Fine Pie” and the bluesy “Empty Eye.” The band believes in guitar interplay for its own sake, and anyway, it’s not exactly as if Paul Major’s phlegmy bellow is missed when it takes its usual back seat to his stoned-in-the-basement duels with fellow guitarist Jesper Eklow. “Endless” is also apt given that Full House Head’s eight songs last an average of nine and a half minutes each. But when Endless Boogie stretches out, as on the simple, potent back-and-forths of “Empty Eye” and the wah-wah scrapes of “Pack Your Bags,” it achieves a kind of low-key liftoff.