The Giraffes
Prime Motivator
(Crustacean)
Dirty, sexy, death-defying metal from the free-range ruminants of New York.
With five records, one gunshot wound and three heart attacks to their credit, this plucky Brooklyn band has earned its right to party like it’s 1983—the year Black Flag, Angry Samoans and other thrashy, proggy, so-called “hardcore bands” roamed the Earth, heedless of genre rules or their own well-being. That hard-living esprit finds a sexy flourish on these 13 tracks (given bong-resinous glow by Queens of the Stone Age producer Dave Catching), as guitarist Damien Paris wends swaggering, ’70s-metal come-ons through infectious black comedies (“The Power of Fatherhood,” “Allergic to Magnets”) whose abiding concerns include ambulances, ICUs and the various routes to same. For a new definition of hardcore, consider the fact that the title song refers to the implanted defibrillator that keeps singer Aaron Lazar alive.
