Claw Boys Claw

God help the beast in Claw Boys Claw, for they stand as the foremost practitioners of an unhinged stage ethos ever to command the Dutch club circuit. The group’s focal point remains frontman Peter Te Bos, an artist whose intensity recalls the same lineage as Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Nick Cave during the Birthday Party years, and Iggy Pop in his Stooges period. Drawing clear motivation from these American counterparts, the band forged a distinctive path through garage rock and punk blues from 1983 to 1997, adding measured infusions of psychedelia and country on the 1997 release Will-o-the-Wisp. Though the members never issued an official split announcement, silence prevailed until their 2007 onstage reunion and the subsequent studio effort Pajama Day in 2008.

Alongside Fatal Flowers, Claw Boys Claw ranks as the most consequential act to emerge from the Dutch capital’s early-’80s punk milieu, known as the Amsterdam School of Guitar. Allard Jolles, formerly of l’Attentat, assembled the group in 1983. Its inaugural roster featured bassist Bobbie Rossini, guitarist John Cameron, and Jolles on drums. Singer Peter Te Bos entered the fold after Rossini spotted him in a supermarket, an encounter that completed the lineup. Victory in a local band competition supplied the funds for their debut recording, Shocking Shades of Claw Boys Claw, which appeared in 1984 to generally favorable notices and launched a string of nationwide performances. Te Bos’s wildly unorthodox presence, together with the band’s indelible reading of Shocking Blue’s “Venus,” ensured a permanent impression. Polydor signed them in 1986, the same year they appeared at both the storied Dutch Pink Pop Festival and Roskilde in Denmark. Te Bos further cemented their domestic notoriety by planting a kiss on the Dutch State Secretary for Welfare, Public Health and Culture while accepting the BV Pop Award.

Their fourth album, Crack My Nut, earned a slot at New York’s New Music Seminar, yet critical exposure never produced measurable sales. Following their dismissal from Polydor, the band retaliated with Hitkillers, an all-covers collection that radically inverted Dutch pop staples by Earth and Fire and Cuby & the Blizzards in a manner that eclipsed even their earlier “Venus.” The rear sleeve displays an amusing photographic array of the musicians costumed as their purported idols. Tour commitments surrounding Songs for Drella prevented John Cale from producing the next Claw Boys Claw album. Angelbite signaled a move toward a blues-inflected, more melodic palette, with heightened attention to rhythmic frameworks and noticeable growth in Te Bos’s vocals. During this period Rossini and Marius Schrader—Jolles’s replacement on drums—departed and were succeeded by Arno Kooy and Marc Lamb.

An increasingly acoustic orientation in live settings further refined their sound. That trajectory culminated in the artistic and commercial peak of 1992’s Sugar, recorded with producer Michel Schoots, the Urban Dance Squad drummer known as Magic Stick, and new bassist Geert de Groot, formerly of Fatal Flowers. The unexpected chart entry of “Rosie” propelled thirty thousand copies of the album into circulation. Sugar was succeeded by the comparatively modest 1994 release Nipple. After a three-year interval the band issued Will-o-the-Wisp, their final studio album for an extended stretch. Psychedelic textures and a country tinge failed to deliver the anticipated breakthrough. Members subsequently pursued separate musical paths, while Te Bos devoted himself to graphic design, creating, among other works, the Urban Dance Squad logo and the mascot for the Dutch Campingflight to the Lowlands festival.

Late in 2007 the group resumed live appearances to the satisfaction of longtime followers, and early the next year PIAS issued Pajama Day.