The Mighty Orq is a living, breathing piece of Texas’s musical heritage. Although the band’s music is firmly steeped in the dive-bar blues and boogie-rock of such legends as ZZ Top and Stevie Ray, Orq applies a fresh sense of melody and plenty of poppy hooks, bringing an incredible amount of energy and momentum to an all-too-frequently stale genre. Don’t worry, though: Orq experiments carefully, never losing the gut-level impact that makes blues-based rock music so damned enjoyable in the first place. To the Bone, due out the night of this show, finds the local three-piece going farther afield with their exploration of the limitations and possibilities of guitar-driven Southern rock. The album features several overtly poppy songs (Orq calls them “pretty”), one “Gulf Coast club anthem” remix hopeful and one political soapbox. Presumably so they don’t alienate the die-hard rockists in their fanbase, Orq has issued a guitars-only disclaimer concerning one of the “pretty” songs, “Blue Eyes” — just in case you thought they’d gone soft and snuck in a few keyboards. Hardly. Orq wants you to know you can still count on them to provide the backdrop to a few beers, a few laughs and a damn good time.
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2008.
