Courtroom Wedding, the feral new album by singer-songwriter-punk rock legend Chris D.’s new unit Poison Fang Society, succeeds In the Red Records’ release of two expansive albums by the bandleader’s Divine Horsemen, Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix (2021) and Bitter End to a Sweet Night (2022).
The taut, economical eight-song set grew out of several songs penned in the immediate wake of the COVID pandemic lockdown and originally envisioned as material for a third Divine Horsemen record. But logistical problems involving the band’s co-lead singer Julie Christensen’s ability to record in Los Angeles led to the formulation of a new solo configuration rooted in the past.
Poison Fang Society guitarist Larry Schemel, most recently of Death Valley Girls, and Tucson-bred drummer Johnny Ray are both veterans of the eight-piece lineup heard on the Flesh Eaters’ 1999 album Ashes of Time. They are joined by bassist-keyboardist-guitarist Sharif Dumani, who also engineered the collection and co-produced with Chris D.
The songs Chris brought to the studio reflect a shift in style: “I was really trying to write some more traditional kinds of songs, but not make them sound really anonymous. On the last couple of albums, the Divine Horsemen albums, there was a lot more cut-up stuff. I still did some cut-up in the lyrics with this record, but not as much. The lyrics to ‘Cellars to Weep’ were very influenced by songs like Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ or ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ even though song doesn’t sound like that. I wanted to keep that kind of surrealist humor that Bob Dylan has — those nonsense phrases that add meaning when they’re all put together.”
With tracks inspired by subjects as diverse at the gun-toting MAGA couple who pointed their weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters (“Goddamn Thieving Shame”) to the sleazy come-on cover lines of ‘50s pulp paperbacks (“Sex Kitten”), Courtroom Wedding flexes a lean, potent sound that recalls the knife-edge attack of the Don Kirk-era Flesh Eaters and the heavyweight vibe of Chris’ second solo album (as Stone by Stone), 1989’s I Pass for Human. Like this punk grand master’s finest work, it displays an electric, tormented immediacy.
“Courtroom Wedding sounds more live than the Divine Horsemen records,” Chris says, “and I think that’s a good thing.”
