Mikki James the band, led by Mikki James the singer and bassist, is an old-fashioned hard rock group, and on their relatively brief fourth album, James comes on like second- (or third-)generation
Iggy Pop, filling his lyrics with punk attitude and his vocals with belligerence to match the electric guitars, which pounce with three-chord fury. The ellipsis in the album's title,
Guess What..., suggests there are unspoken words left out, and that suggestion is fulfilled in the title song as James follows the question with that most familiar of Anglo-Saxon epithets, "F*ck you!" (Despite plenty of profanity, the album does not carry an advisory sticker for explicit language.) There's nothing new going on here, of course, but by now this sort of anger and aggression, married to familiar guitar rock, are a tradition of popular music, and Mikki James (band and individual) carry it on as well as anybody. ~ William Ruhlmann