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
No comments:
Post a Comment