Honestly, the world wasn’t really waiting for the garage rock debut album by two white middle-aged men, right? But that shouldn’t stop you from giving dynamic two-piece Hawel/McPhail a spin anyway because they make the age-gap easily go away on the fuzzy rock and roll smasher that Minor Commotion is. Transmissions From The Upper Room, their first full-lengh has been in the making for quite some time. Frehn Hawel and Rick McPhail first met twenty years ago when their two bands back then – Venus Vegas and Tigerbeat – first went on tour together. Over the past decades they never lost track of each other despite various other projects. Hawel switched sides and went on turning the Reeperbahn Festival into the glamorous industry event we all crave for each year while McPhail joined German indie rock instituion Tocotronic back in 2004. They never lost track of each other although it took a moment to turn the occasional jam sessions and live gigs into a full-blown album. The result is anything but innovative but nothing else than pure and unfiltered love for electric guitars and dirty basement rock and roll. And after over one year without gigs you can definitely count me in for that vibe in the not so dustant future. The Hawel/McPhail album is out this week on La Pochette Surprise, so make sure to give it a spin.