Bad Luck City

Critic's Choice, Westword August 10, 2006,
Dameon Merkl is a dangerously funny man with a penchant for inspiredself-deprecation and Bukowski-esque aphorisms. Get him behind the mikewith his band, however, and he's as menacing and spooky as a walkthrough Lafayette Cemetery on a moonless summer night. Led by Merkl,Bad Luck City -- made up of percussionist Andrew Warner, guitaristsGregor Kammerer and Joshua Perry, bassist Yassit Arocho and violinistKelly O'Dea -- crafts lurid tales of lost souls hitting rockbottom in search of redemptive truth, only to realize that such a thingis tantalizingly out of reach. There's an inherent dark, fieryintensity to the music of Bad Luck City (due at the Bluebird Theaterthis Friday, August 11) that conjures images of traipsing through theworst dive bars imaginable late at night. If a deeply guttural TomWaits was backed by Cop Shoot Cop, it might sound something likethis.-Critic's Choice,Tom Murphy, Westword 8/06
Musicians have the strange compulsion to dig their own holes and neverfind a way to crawl back out. Take Denver's Bad Luck City: Itsself-titled debut is a thick, mucky quagmire of piss, bile, meanspirits and whiskey-spiked backwash. Like the Mekons dunking the DirtyThree in a septic tank full of blues, the group scrapes slithery violinand slide guitar against wheezing harmonica and piano until thefriction starts to stink like a rotting corpse. Singer/bassist DameonMerkl is the hate child of every great, drunken-fuckup-genius-croonerthat was ever ejected from rock's scabby underbelly: Tom Waits,Michael Gira, Shane MacGowan, even Jim Morrison. His filth-smearedlyrics and guttural low notes trawl the nether regions ofconsciousness, shoveling up psychic sludge and muddying the waters ofreason and sanity. "I must have been born under a bad moon," Merklgrunts like he's exhaling pure pitch. "Bad fuckin' sun andsolar system." As dark, dank and dirty as it is, Bad Luck City is worthbreaking out the shovel for. -Jason Heller, Westword 11/04