Stroke My Vagenis: Probing Rowdy Shadehouse's New Album

Denver’s ultimate party band goes hard and deep


By Eric Frank
November 25, 2015

Vagenis.

Do you stroke it? Is it hard or soft? Slow or fast? In... out... in... out?!

Rowdy Shadehouse is unlike any band we've come across since we started covering Colorado's colorful music scene back in 2012. They are the touch, the thrust and the primal force inside all of us, spewing forth a vivacity with essential exertion and unmatched stamina that will leave you begging for more. A long-lost love couldn't hang with these boys — they're here to get dirty. They're here to bring the raucous. They're here to satisfy.

We gave a listen to Rowdy Shadehouse's new album Vagenis, and right from the start, the seduction begins. Primal and raw, this isn't your grandaddy's swoon song. This is an in-your-face dance-party, the result of Iggy Pop and P-Funk fucking, having nasty little guttersnipe who grew up and had a three-way with The Red Hot Chili Peppers and James Brown.

The opening track, "Push It, Pump It" offers a canvas of ska, but paints a picture with a brush drawn from a rock n' roll quiver (because you know, artists keep their paintbrushes in quivers).

The second track, "PHD" clocks in at 150 bpm and invokes the spirit of its dirty daddy, James Brown. A nasty lick turns around both the music and your sonic expectation, resulting in an original offering that immediately sets the standard for the rest of the album.

Batting in the all-important 3-slot is the heavy-hitting "Always Forward", a sexual fusing of mega-metal and unforgiving funk that offers a sultry escapade not unlike a first homo-erotic experience; confusing yet uniquely satisfying.

"Built To Survive" occupies the four-hole (the vagenis?), syncopating its way through explicitly clever lyrics and a guitar solo that grabs you by the balls and doesn't let go until the horns takes over, turning your inside out and outside hard before entering the album's fifth track, "Tough Pussy". This curious track embodies a bit of Tool, a little 90's-era grunge and a whole lot of the je ne sais quoi that makes Rowdy Shadehouse the funk-buddies we'd all love to have in our "favorites" section of our cell phone. In a live setting, this track would seem to instigate a healthy interaction between band and crowd as a primal chant takes this song from an average sexual experience to one of pure lust and desire, leaving scratches in one's sweat-soaked posterior.

The last piece of this carnal puzzle falls into place with the album's title track, "Vagenis", a hard-rockin', tom-tom-thompin', pussy-poppin', mouth-droppin' mad-heat of a song. Once again, this tune's syncopation brings heightened vigor to the somewhere-between-rock-n'-roll-and-party-funk sound that Rowdy Shadehouse brings to your expectant ears.

In all, Vagenis is an album perfect for setting the tone on a Friday night. It'll get you off your ass and moving, erecting the hope for a sexual experience one desires for the weekend. Vagenis is the id of the musical soul, innate with instinctive impulses and primal urges wrapped in an enigmatic quality that is neither male nor female; neither love nor lust; neither penetrating nor penetrated. Rowdy Shadehouse have brought not just a fresh sound to the Denver music scene, but a fresh perspective on the enduring relationship between music and sex.

We just feel bad for the drummer who has to play behind a bunch of grown-ass men with their dicks and balls tucked between their legs.


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