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Archive for the ‘Music Review’ Category

Music Review: Daniel Romano – Come Cry With Me Normaltown Records]

23 Jan

NTR1006-DanielRomano-REDPeople often wondered why Gram Parsons, a member of a 60′s generation that cast off the past so dramatically, would choose to perform music so informed by country music clad in Nudie suit. Granted the suit was adorned in spangled by pot leaves. But still, what gives? Was he a novelty act? But then you heard “Hickory Wind” and you knew this wasn’t hippie irony. This was reverence.

Ontario-based singer/songwriter Daniel Romano stares at you from his latest release ‘Come Cry With Me” donned in a brown, Nudie-style, bespangled suit. Stetson, hipster ‘stache and sideburns. Like a retro Instagram filter set to Country Gold. Romono dares you not to ask “is this dude kidding?”

By music don’t lie. ‘Come Cry With Me” is as real as anything that’s come out as country music scene since it moved from the porch to the studio mic.

Like Chuck Ragan and Austin Lucas, Romano spent his youth in punk and hard rock msuic founding the indie-rock outfit Attack in Black. Like them his journey led him to the music he grew up listening to A music with stylistic and thematic ties to punk and hard rock. Country and folk music.

Hank (Williams and Snow) Gram, Willie, Waylon, Billy Joe, Ernest, George Jones – they would all identify Romono’s fourth solo record as spiritual and melodic kin.

Weepers like “The Middle Child” and “Two Pillow Sleeper” used to spend weeks at the top of the jukebox charts and brings to mind long-forgotten smokey bars, broken hearts and cheap beer.

But it’s not all tales of the misbegotten and downtrodden. “Chicken Bill” takes a page out of the Cash book of Boom Chicka Boom and pulls the chair out with a mysterious ending. The wry humor and double entendre soaked “When I Was Abroad” sound like a result of a Roger Miller and Shel Silverstein amphetamine-fueled songwriting session at the Playboy Mansion.

And the excellent celebration of 3/4 waltzes “Just Before The Moment” would make Lefty Frizzell smile and cause Music Row execs the night sweats.

The rebellion that shapes punk and hard rock music has led Romano to one of the most rebellious acts he could undertake in today’s cultural environment. Creating an honest-to-God country music record.

four-rate

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Posted in alt.country, Americana, Country Music, Honky Tonk, Music Review, New Artists, New Releases, News Round Up

 

Music Review: Malcolm Holcombe – Down The River [Gyspy Eyes Music]

26 Sep

Malcolm Holcombe should be huge. Perhaps the lack of acclaim for the North Carolina native are the  boyish looks that  have long faded from his Music City days due in large part to years of substance abuse.  Maybe it’s the baked gravel voice, or the enigmatic themes that wind you in circles. Maybe it’s the raw, human heart that beats in every word delivered like emotional shrapnel. maybe Holcomb is too real, too lacking in veiled irony. This is not the lily-livered , Fedora-wearing, twee folk music that’s permeated the music culture over the last decade.  I can imagine Malcolm Holcolmb acoustic guitar emblazoned with “This Machine Kills Hipsters.”

Holcomb’s ninth album, Down The River, bursts to life with “Butcher In Town” featuring Darrell Scott’s dobro acreens off Ken Coomer’s kick drum and Tammy Rogers-King’s jumping mandolin. “You a’int from here,  When the shit hits the fan, There’s more meat on a pencil, From the butcher in town.” reels the chorus warning us of “All black and white, From the wars of the souls, Too much whiskey, Money and gold.” Abuse of power is a theme throughout Down The River. Whether the personal delusions of a man bilking a woman from her earnings and blowing it up into a greater vision of grandeur in “I Call The Shots” or the mass manipulation of world corruption in the frenzied “Twisted Arms.” The palpable indignation of “Whitewash Job” recounts recent topics of disasters and federal incompetence buttressed belied by a jaunty breakdown of Holcombe masterful picking.

Corruption is also represented,  on “Trail O’ Money” guest vocalist Steve Earle, who once stated that Holcombe is ..”the best songwriter I ever threw out of my recording studio,” sounds comfortable with proletariat lines like “My instincts are wounded,  My schools bleed with guns, My children are recklessly, Lost in the sun”  He and Holcolmb join in the rallying chorus “Gangway i’m comin’ with a trail o’ money, Gangway stay outta my way, Gangway i’m comin’ with a trail o’ money, No room for the poor to stay.” No simple election sloganeering here.

Love songs fare little better in this hard soul’s terrain. “Gone Away At Last” brings along the river bank drums, stippling banjo and a fiddle dervish into a funnel cloud of a love song Cormac McCarthy could love.”The search lights beg to dim, In the blood of nightimes cover, No human sounds within, The lonely thoughts of lovers.” “the routine hammers solid, in the heads of spit and spoiled, (only) broken from contentions, Of the jealous snake’s recoil.” This is a long journey into the heart.  “In Your Mercy” is a lament of a widow living in dire situation which is lightened briefly by the lovely lilt of Emmylou Harris.

These are not spoon-fed narratives guiding you gently through linear slices of life.  Soapboxes are splintered for bonfire kindling and flags are shred and made into rags to dab tears or blot up blood. This is the human parade in all it’s violent and glory.

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Posted in Americana, Legends, Music Review, New Releases, News Round Up, Video

 

Music Review: Blackberry Smoke – The Whippoorwill [Southern Ground]

11 Aug

My first encounter with Atlanta’s Blackberry Smoke – Charlie Starr on Lead Vocals, Guitar, Richard Turner on Bass, Vocals, Brit Turner on Drums, Paul Jackson on Guitar, Vocals and Brandon Still on Keyboards – was seeing them open two shows for ZZ Top at the Beacon theater. The neo-Grecian Beacon was originally a deluxe movie place designed Chicago architect Walter W. Ahlschlager of Chicago and , since 1989, most famously the home for the Allman Brothers yearly New York City spring residency.

Both shows were great,as a Texan I am obligated to see all ZZ Top shows in a 50 mile radius, and Blackberry Smoke easily won over a crowd in the unenviable spot opening for a legendary band. The band won the crowd by performing their no-frills brand of Southern rock, that rowdier sibling to the Progressive Country movement. The blend of blues, country rock, r&b, rock, southern soul and gospel forged by pioneers like The Allmans, ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Black Oak Arkansas and others provided a rich terrain for the band to work.

Newly released The Whippoorwill, their third studio album and first for Zac Brown’s independent label Southern Ground, proves the quintet has 12 years of road-honed musical contributions to the cause. This is made clear by the brash opener “Six Ways To Sunday” continues that tradition. Fueled by a Still ‘s barrell house piano, and fuzz guitar boogie and blue-collar come-ons like “I’m chasing my tail, and a couple other ones too” cements the song as a staple of their live performance from years to come.

“Pretty Little Lie” and “Everybody Knows She’s Mine” are excellent romps on romantic denial and celebration respectfully. Both songs deftly fuse country and rock so organically and soulfully that they stand, not only as great songs, but as sharp contrasts to Music City’s recent pathetic attempts to create the same sound.

“One Horse Town” leans toward folk before kicking into a rock groove detailing the isolation of rural living. The same quiet opening lures you into Ain’t Much Left Of Me” as the big rock sound sweeps you up. The title cut is a choice slice of Southern soul that stretches out like a country road baking in the Summer sun.

“Leave A Scar” is a pure piss. vinegar and whiskey rave-up offering a less than PC refrain of “When I die put my bones in the Dixie dirt” and “I may not change the word but I’m gonna leave a scar.” Kinder and gentler this aint’.

Southern rock continues to be maligned in the current genteel musical landscape. More for, I feel, cultural baggage rather than musical merit. The celebration of Southern history, culture celebrated sincerely without a a wink and a smirk pitiable strikes some as fodder for knuckle-draggers. In the end Blackberry Smoke makes great, well played, music loyal to tradition, to to thier fans. They’d sure prefer you to enjoy it, but if you don’t I’m sure they give a good goddamn.

While other contemporary bands, Like the Drive-By Truckers, use Southern rock as an element of expression; at the first whiff of commercial acceptance they jettison the style like an old pair of overalls to court their new-found demographic thus losing their soul and much of their base.

It’s great to hear this level of love and joy Blackberry Smoke brings to their music, a style that is obviously not a marketing contrivance. The album has just been officially released but has been available at their live shows for some time as a reward to their long-time fans. As Starr says “There is no way on God’s green earth that we are not going to put this in the hands of people who have spent their money night in and night out when we’re out doing shows. If we’ve got it, they are going to get it. I’d give them away, I don’t care. I didn’t want to make them wait another six months. They’ve been there for us, and we wanted them to have the music first.”

This, ladies and gentleman, is the real deal.

Official Site | Buy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv29x-AEGNM&list=UUlEMmhYh_L1ZV7Nw6iq-2ng&index=1&feature=plcp

 
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Posted in Music Releases, Music Review, southern rock

 

Music Review – Delta Rae – Carry the Fire [Sire]

23 Jun

Pop music has gotten a bad rap. Pop has gone from being “popular” to engineered mass appeal and style over all especially substance blotting out all pretension of song-craft or, HA! , longevity

Great songs by such luminaries as Elton John and Fleetwood Mac in the 70s and Squeeze and XTC in the 80s, took the music around them and refined it into a polished work of studio perfection. With hooks big enough to hang the moon on and wry lyrics that hinted at bigger things without mired in the ponderous, these musicians proved you could be popular and create music for the ages.

Seymour Stein knows a thing or two about this. As the cultural chaos of punks ripped through the fabric of music Stein saw pop beauty by The Ramones , Talking Heads and the Pretenders and others who he signed as  co-founder of Sire Records.

Stein signed the six-piece band from North Carolina Delta Rae after a mutual friend set them up for an acoustic performance at his office. He must have been impressed as he called more people into his office to hear the band play for 45 minute audition.

Like the other bands Stein has signed, Delta Rae resonates the trends around them, in this case Americana, and amke it appealing to a larger ausince that might wince at a claw-hammer style banjo.

On “Holding On To Good” acoustic guitar and piano burst “Carry The Fire” open with such assurance it’s surprising this is a debut album. Brittany Holljes is a woman who can belt out or sing delicately as she does here with harmonies in response “In the morning…” along with her like a tide rolling in an back out. In this opening the bar is set high. “Is There Anyone Out There” follows with Brittany’s brother Ian Hölljes handling vocals (half the band are siblings with brother Eric Hölljes on vocals, guitar, piano and keys.) Like the former this song also mixes bombast with lovely hushed melody.

“Morning Comes” has a gospel soul as an acapella start and hand clap accompaniment give Eric Holljes lot of room to soar. Though nowhere near as nimble the style brings to mind Freddy Mercury and the sound of the song overall makes me think the band has been had Queen’s greatest hits on heavy play for some time.

Gospel is also the influence in my favorite track “Bottom of the River.” I like things dark and gritty and, even though the production is crisp, there’s a Southern Gothic quality in the song that  is brought out in the video for the song. Big vocals of of Brittany and the band and percussion is a central instrument of the number that is accentuated in the a mid-song interlude. The darkness is also reflected in “Fire” with it’s controlled cacophony of sound and forgoing the pop elements momentarily to drive toward pure passion.

The infusion of pop in Americana is not new. Delta Rae join their contemporaries The Civil Wars, Mumford and Sons, the Avett Brothers in bringing a folk, country and soul hybrid to the masses. Carry the Fire joins there ranks as a great example of how pop music can also be excellently crafted and and not seemingly focused on hits.  I applaud Delta Rae for this fine first release and for bringing a larger audience into the Americana fold.

Here’s to success without compromise.

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Posted in Americana, Bands, Music Releases, Music Review, New Artists, New Releases, News Round Up, Video

 

Music Review: Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest of Us [Mercyland Records]

09 May

An Easter vacation was the perfect opportunity to listen to  “Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us” a compilation release by singer/songwriter, producer and musician Phil Madeira. As the title suggests the thematic underpinning of the album is spirituality but, luckily, this is not the God-as-backdrop trotted out in too many Music City productions. Nor is it a blandly fuzzy new-age soundtrack to glaze your eyes.

Community runs deep in Mercyland. Started by Madeira as a project on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, the project achieved it’s funding goal of $5,000 and went on the an an additional $32,205 on top of that.

Like one of the albums contributors and fellow traveler, Buddy Miller, Madeira reminds us that the divine can come from common places. Reaching back to a source of faith that nourished bands like the Louvin and Stanley brothers and later by Johnny Cash and Billy Joe Shaver, these are songs of common experiences of love, hope and grace.

Some of Americana music’s finest have gathered here to bear witness. Miller, Emmylou Harris, The Carolina Chocolate Drops and others work as missionaries that work across faiths and genres to create a unifying spirit of music.

The Civil Wars begins things with joyful noise as with “From This Valley”  John Paul White strums his acoustic guitar and hollers “Woo hoo!” He and Joy Williams voices intertwines and soars like morning doves.

Shawn Mullins’ follows with a simmering swamp-blues “Give God the Blues.” Mullins calls out creeds, saints and sinners alike, tears down the walls of division and assures all that none have a monopoly on the Lord’s love. He assures us all that “God’s above all that.”

Buddy Miller has a long career of testifying without sermonizing and on his calmly spirited “I Believe in You” he deftly commands this force of song-craft.  Like an old-style tent revival run up against a traveling medicine show the varied spice of life is tasted. The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ banjo-driven gospel “Lights In The Valley.” Madeira’s self-titled contribution  “Mercyland” is a New Orleans-style story of hope and redemption. Madeira joins Cindy Morgan in the gloriously yearning “Leaning On You.”

Developing allegory is a tougher job than just using ready make symbols for threadbare religious shorthand. The concept of spirituality is a tougher job for a lazy songwriter than just rhyming “Jesus comes” with “bangin’ drums.”
The greatest and most enduring gospel songs, from The Great Speckled Bird to Amazing Grace, are master works of allegory and allow a richer and deeper musical expression and broadness in narrative to speak to beauty, devotion and sacrifice.

Phil Madeira and his musical congregation do good and great work on this collection of songs that inspire without beating you over the head with the Good Book. They also don’t put you to sleep in the pew to dream of post church fried chicken. That’s a miracle it itself.

Official Site  |  Buy

 
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Posted in alt.country, Americana, Bands, From where I sit, Legends, Music Review

 

Album Review: Amy Francis – Balladacious [Independent Release]

12 Mar

Bodacious is a Southern/Southwestern portmanteau of bold and audacious. It’s meaning is remarkable, courageous, audacious, spirited and unmistakable.
Corpus Christi TX native Amy Francis uses this linguistic fusion and forms the title of her new release , Balladacious. Just as she reinterprets words Francis also uses this skill to give her own take on some of  country music’s best-known classics.
The album opens with Francis beautiful voice powerfully breaking the silence with a vulnerable delivery of the Hank Cochran barroom lament Don’t Touch Me. Francis brings the longing and apprehension contained in the song to a palatable level and disarms you of all cynicism. A staple of country music is it’s unabashed sentiment and Francis’ heart is emblazoned boldly on this first song.

The spirits of Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette and Brenda Lee are conjured with all their romantic weariness giving testament. Not just because Francis covers Sweet Dreams, Apartment #9 and Fool Number One respectively, but because she is a believer. She brings authenticity to these songs because she embodies them wholly not simply mimicking them like many Music City talen dipping a toe in traditionalism.
Her take on Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billy Joe reworks this dark song of small-town gossip and makes it swing with an acoustic guitar and strings accompaniment. Her covers of George Jone’s “Picture of Me Without You” and “I’ll Share My World With You” elevates them to the honky-tonk majesty they deserve and Vince Gill’s hit “When I Call Your Name” is covered with barrel-house piano and pedal steel accompaniment and achieves a forlornness that LeAnn Rimes’s cover never came close to.  Ronnie Milsap’s “Stranger Things Have Happened” is given an equal turn with Francis’ voice soaring at heights while singing about the depths. The hope against hope and lessons contained in these testimonials of  despair makes country music some of the greatest forms of contemporary tragedy. Francis approaches each with dignity and grace they deserve and strikingly nimble vocals that breath life into every barroom confession.

I have an ambivalent relationship with Nashville Sound era country music. When Owen Bradley, with Chet Atkins and Bob Ferguson moved hillbilly music from the hollers and honky tonks to the supper clubs, by adding strings, backing vocals and other adornment better suited for crooners of the day, they laid the path toward the enormously lucrative but culturally superficial pop-country industry we’ve inherited. Like the great performers of the Nashville Sound era Francis charms me into putting aside bias by keeping the soul enact while stripping back just enough veneer to let you hear the heart break.

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Posted in alt.country, Americana, Music Review, New Artists, New Releases

 

Song Premiere: Lera Lynn Covers “Ring Of Fire”

03 Mar

Athens GA-based Americana songstress Lera Lynn follows up her debut full length (Have You Met Lera Lynn?) with a seven inch, which includes a cover of June Carter Cash penned and Johnny Cash renowned Ring of Fire.

Lynn says of the cover “I always thought June Carter’s “Ring of Fire” was written as a dark song, maybe it’s just where I was when I heard it one dark day. It’s been a lot of fun to rearrange it, almost making it my own. I hope we’ve done it justice. I hope they [the Cash Family] would be proud.”

I never understand when people do cover songs, especially of iconic songs, and then don’t interpret them personally. Lynn does exactly that with her take smolders (heh) punctuated with discordant peaks in the chorus. Look for Lera Lynn  on tour in Texas and up the East coast this March and April.

Lera Lynn – Ring of Fire

 

 

 
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Posted in alt.country, Americana, Music Review, New Artists, New Releases, News Round Up

 

Music Review: Lyle Lovett – Release Me [Curb/Universal]

28 Feb

As a part of what Steve Earle called “Nashville’s great credibility scare of the mid ’80s.” Lyle Lovett, along with Earle, k.d. Lang, Dwight Yoakam and others took up the traditionalist Outlaw mantel of the 70′s and reinvigorated country music from it’s soft-rock and Urban Cowboy influence the times.

Lyle Lovett’s new album “Release me,” exhibits pun in name as well as aesthetic. The album is the last for the Curb Records, the label for his entire 26-year. 11-album, career. And in case you missed that the cover art depicts Lyle tied up head-to-ankle in a lariat.

Though Lovett continues a late career trend of including cover songs. But this adios to Curb raises the stakes as it contains only two Lovett originals among the album’s 14 tunes. You might conclude that this last release would be a weakened collection to meet contractual obligations. You would be wrong in that assessment.

Sure Lovett may not be the most prolific songwriter on the planet but he is one of the best interpreters of classic country. There is no one fit to polish Lovett’s boots when it comes close to serving as a diplomat for the eclectic music styles of the Lone Star State.

“Release me” wastes no time offering a burning interpretation of the classic instrumental breakdown of  “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom.” The number made popular in the 1930s by Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith sounds both timeless and spirited in the hands of Lovett and his band.

The title track became a hit for both Jimmy Heap and Ray Price, both in 1954. Here it’s done as a duet with Lovett and k.d. lang, who is so far down in themix her soaring vocals are lost. That quibble aside it’s a great tear-in-my-beer standard well done.

The cover of Michael Franks’ “White Boy Lost in the Blues” slinks in with the funky blues accentuated by Arnold McCuller harmony vocals.The gospel/R&B and Memphis horn-sound of “Isn’t That So” works to a rousing effect and will probably kill live.

Understand You channels beautifully the tender-hearted cowboy Lovett has portrayed many time in his career. The cover of Brown Eyed is looser that Chuck Berry’s original or the covers by covered by many including fellow Texans Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings. But the song still carries the weight Berry intended after being inspired by witnessing a Hispanic man being arrested by a policeman.

The Ragtime-inspired  “Keep It Clean” dares you not to cut a rug and William Moore’s One Way Gal is a fine-time front porch testament to a good woman.
“Dress of Laces” is an achingly lovely Daughter-Father twist on the classic murder ballad. White Freightliner Blues is one of the few up-tempo songs penned by the late, great Townes Van Zandt and Lovett plays it to it’s full open-road greatness.

The two originals Lovett contributes to the album, The first is “The Girl With the Holiday Smile” (also on his 2011 holiday EP “Songs For the Season;”) came from a real-life 1978 encounter young lady hiding out from the cops inside a Houston 7-11. This is my second favorite Christmas/hooker song (Tom Waits’ Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis being the first.)  The second cut  “Night’s Lullaby,” which features Nickel Creek’s Sara and Sean Watkins, was penned for a 2011 run in the Shakespeare Center Los Angeles’ production of “Much Ado About Nothing” that the three appeared in.

I look forward to the work Lovett is free to explore in his new world as a free agent and am thankful he has left us with something this great to tide us over until the nest batch of surprises comes along.

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Posted in alt.country, Americana, Bands, Country Music, Legends, Music Review, New Releases, Texas, Video

 

Music Review: Gretchen Peters – Hello Cruel World [Scarlet Letter Records]

05 Feb

I became aware of Gretchen Peters when I heard One to the Heart, One to the Head , a covers album she released with one of my favorite singer/songwriters Tom Russell. I was impressed by their take on many great country-folk songs, from Bob Dylan to Townes Van Zandt, and Peters’ smoky vocals contrasting with Russell’s dusty growl.

While reviewing the album I became aware of Peters’ past life as a New York-born, Nashville-based songwriter for Music City country, pop and soul. Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Neil Diamond and the late Etta James She also won the 1995 Country Music Association Song Of The Year award and turned some heads with her unflinching view of a woman’s domestic abuse with McBride’s Independence Day.

These song-craft skills, and the courage that maturity affords you to speak fearlessly, have resulted in Gretchen Peters’New release of darkly engaging Americana-pop Hello Cruel World. Recent trials and revelations in her life provide fertile soil for an collection of songs that look into the abyss and dares to laugh. Dares to love.  What could have been a very bleak album transforms brutality, indifference and the absurdity of life into jagged gems that makes you want to sing along and occasionally tap a toe. Peters co-produces along with husband Barry Walsh and Doug Lancio. they use sparse arrangements and atmosphere that made One to the Heart, One to the Head such a pleasure.

The self-titled opener is a moody study of contrast and personal perseverance. “I’m not dead but I’m damaged goods, and it’s getting late.” Followed by a chorus of “I’m a very lucky girl” sung with beautifully weary resignation backed by minor-chord strings. St. Francis was  inspired by the Gulf oil spill and co-written by Tom Russell, who often employs Catholic symbols and analogies to make corporeal points. The song engages St. Francis of Assisi to show how the divine is often overlooked or, when recognized, taken for granted.

Torn allegiances dominate The Matador as the thrill and drama of a bull ring serves as a metaphor for passion and conflict. Ordained minister Rodney Corwell performed the matrimonial ceremony for Peters’ and Walsh in 2010, on Dark Angel, Corwell plays the foil of love in  a tale of dangerous attraction and certain demise. Camille shares co-writing credits with Peters’ “Wine, Women, and Song” members Matraca Berg and Suzy Bogguss, is smoky loneliness and sweet despair shepherded by trumpet and barroom piano. Paradise Found has a hot summer day simmer that references Steinbeck and a play on Milton where the song derives it’s title.

From the Stevie Nicks-like album cover Peters stares at you from the dusky cool-colored cover with an orb that looks like a globe or a crystal ball. It serves as both metaphors here. These are adult songs about adult situations that in lesser hands would result in a very dull listening. In Peter’s hands poetry and the profane is balanced in a way that reminds us we are not alone and that beauty and hope, as well as songwriting that engages instead of panders,  still exists.

Official Site | Buy

 
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Posted in alt.country, Americana, From where I sit, Legends, Music Review, New Releases

 

Music Review: Mandolin Orange – Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger [self-released]

12 Nov

This is not typically the kind of music that floats my boat. Most Americana that works the folkie singer/songwriter side of the fence leaves me cold. To me like it’s more commercially lucrative cousin pop-country; a watered down version of a powerful source who’s soul was sold long, long ago. Like corporate beer and steak chain restaurants something wonderful went terribly wrong while bringing something to the masses. And even though folk never sells in Music City numbers the brunch-folk styling of Jack Johnson and M Ward have led to a relatively wide audience and financial independence for the artists.

But sometimes a performer reminds us of what once was. Dylan did this. So did Townes Van Zandt. The Chapel Hill, NC duo of Andrew Marlin (guitar, mandolin, harmonica)  and Emily Frantz (violin/fiddle, guitar, vocals), collectively known as Mandolin Orange, draw from a deeper well than those others to craft their songs and sound. Like Welch and Rawlings or Parsons and Harris there is a reverence for history while charting new sonic landscapes.

There is subtlety in the arraignments. Songs like No Weight and Runnin’ Red would make perfect living room performance faire for a polite audience. But  like a trace of arsenic after a sip of fine whiskey or a Smith & Wesson hammer clicking back under a table set for a romantic dinner there something  menacing just below the surface.

From the excellent Runnin’ Red “The waters runnin’ red tonight, and our bridge is burnin’ hot, we parted ways in the middle, now we gaze from each side” and the Van Zandt-like Clover “You used to live untruly, so kindly, and it left you lying here in ruin, you cut the hand of a good friend and you smiled in all your doing.”

This is not music made to be pretty, but pretty music made to be honest.

To ratchet the burden even higher Mandolin Orange has crafted 18 consistently excellent songs across two disks,  individually titled Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger. There may be a thematic difference between the two but I can’t discern between them. The albums sweeps past you like memories of a whiskey-fueled Saturday night or the landscape from the window of a speeding 18-wheeler. They shift and blur into a singular whole that surprises you when it ends. It surprised me even more that after 18 songs I still wanted more.

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