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Quix*o*tic
MORTAL MIRROR
(KILL ROCK STARS)

Stars graphics

Since the break-up of her last outfit, garage-grrrl greasemonkeys Slant-6, it would seem that DC indie avatar Christina Billotte has spent a lot of time hanging around haunted houses. Her new trio’s second full-length is a cobwebbed manse bedeviled by her gnarled, spidery guitar lines, eerie lyrical motifs, and eldritch incantations (she splits vocal duties with her sister Mira, who also provides hypnotically spare snare-drum backing). "Anonymous Face," with Mick Barr’s loping bass line and Mira’s vampish vocals, sounds like Peggy Lee suffering from a Romilar-soaked fever dream. "Open Up the Walls" channels the Who’s rendition of Edvard Grieg’s "In the Hall of the Mountain King," with guitar and bass ascending and descending the concentric spirals of a cracked granite staircase. Stripped down but more-or-less straightforward readings of Aaron Neville’s "Tell It like It Is" and ’60s soul man Billy Stewart’s "Sitting in the Park" find Christina and Mira locked in honeyed sisterly harmonies — but, tinged as they are with the threat of rain, those songs’ sunny stylings seem mismatched to this slate-gray overcast funeral party. More to the point is a chthonic assault on Black Sabbath’s "Lord of This World," where corpulent riffs lumber forth with menace.

BY MIKE MILIARD

Issue Date: September 26 - October 3, 2002
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