Tuesday, May 9, 2017

CD Odyssey Disc 1002: Hard Working Americans

Today is voting day in British Columbia, so if you live in the Province I sincerely hope you voted. No matter how slow the lineup is at my polling station, I remind myself how lucky I am to live in a modern and functioning democracy. A small wait in order to exercise a right many people around the globe do not have is an easy price to pay.

Disc 1002 is…Rest in Chaos
Artist: Hard Working Americans

Year of Release: 2016

What’s up with the Cover? The third Giant Head cover in a row. I believe this Giant Head belongs to band front man Todd Snider. I recently got a pair of aviator sunglasses myself and dare I say I rock them better than Todd Snider. Sorry, Todd.

How I Came To Know It: I don’t remember. I think I read a review of this album somewhere and it encouraged me to go and look them up. I briefly put this album and their 2014 self-titled debut on my “to get” list. Then I thought about it for a while and decided to take both albums off the list.

About two months after that I saw this album in the local record store. It was now officially off my list, but I decided on a whim to chance it anyway.

How It Stacks Up:  I only have this one album by the Hard Working Americans, so it can’t really stack up.

Ratings: 2 stars

This album is a timely reminder that when I take an album off my “to buy” list before I buy it, there is usually a good reason.

According to Wikipedia, The Hard Working Americans are an American “super group.” I put that designation in quotations because in my world, combining members of Widespread Panic, Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Great American Taxi with vocalist Todd Snider hardly qualifies as a super group in my book.

Unfortunately, while they don’t have the record sales cred of a super group, “Hard Working Americans” do have other key features often associated with them. These include overblown production, generic sound and an album that is in desperate need of an editor.

The style of the band is traditional rock and roll, alt-country and bit of psychedelic alt-folk thrown in for good measure. I like all these things at various times, but the combination on “Rest in Chaos” didn’t work for me. Rather than showing range, it just felt like it lacked focus.

Most of the songs tend to wander, laying down traditional blues rock riffs and then either wallowing in them too long, or degenerating into feedback and guitar noodling.

Snider’s voice is a strong point, and he delivers a cool stoner vibe and a nice rasp that feels like it has been transplanted from the seventies.

However, while Snider’s voice is good it is not good enough to overcome some basic blues riffs that sound like anything you might hear at the local bar on a Wednesday night. One of those places like in the Blues Brothers, with the stage encased in chicken wire. For that experience, these guys would be great, but for a studio act I had a hard time feeling it.

It also didn’t help that this record is over 60 minutes long, with over half the songs longer than five minutes and two longer than seven. None of the songs needed to go on this long, and the cumulative effect of the experience wore my interest out long before the album decided it was done with me.

There are some bright spots, notably “Dope is Dope” a song that feels like the second coming of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. This song, and its more laid back acoustic partner, "The High Price of Inspiration" explore the complex (and often dangerous) interplay between drug use and creative endeavour. Together they are the album's high points (pun intended), benefiting from solid and painfully honest lyrics, good delivery and clocking in at under four minutes each.

Unfortunately, for every song like these there are two like “Acid,” meandering its way through three or four musical concepts, without fully delivering on any of them.

I didn’t hate this record, but it did tire me out, which isn’t exactly a vote of confidence. And so I will be parting with “Rest in Chaos” only a few short months after I foolishly ignored my own advice and bought it on a whim. Live and learn…


Best tracks: Dope is Dope, High Price of Inspiration

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