James Williamson played flamethrower guitar and co-wrote the songs on Iggy & the Stooges classic album Raw Power. Deniz Tek grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan and moved to Australia to study medicine where he would form the influential band Radio Birdman.
Not exactly underachievers, Williamson put music on the back burner to study engineering and eventually became a technology vice president at Sony, ironically the same company (as CBS Records) that had released Raw Power. Tek would move to Montana where he would serve as flight surgeon with the U.S. Marine Corps and fly in Phantom jets.
Two to One is the sonic vision of a pair of alpha dogs in the Winter of their years. Far from losing steam, Williamson and Tek lead a band through a set of tunes that recall their Detroit roots adding thoughtful story-telling lyrics. Lean, muscular guitar riffs rule the day. “I used to drive along the coast, burning days like cigarettes. Now I’m my down to my last smoke and I can’t see tomorrow yet,” Tek sings in “Stable,” before the song braces into a familiar one-note staccato piano break. “Climate Change” takes a clear-eyed view of a worldwide crisis that might be particularly close to Tek’s days as a surfer—the song even includes a nod to the harmonies of the Beach Boys. F. Scott Fitzgerald might want to reconsider his thoughts about second acts. In rock and roll, at least.
