It’s Sunday morning and I’m in the middle of a lovely weekend, that included a dinner out at my favourite restaurant, chilling with some friends (at a responsible distance), hanging out with Sheila and playing board games and generally relaxing. I’ll be spending today doing a whole lot of laundry, but even that will be fun, since I’ll get a bunch of music listening in at the same time.
All those fun activities meant a delay in writing this next review, but we are here at last! Thank you, dear reader, for your patience and forbearance.
Disc 1402 is…. Self-Titled
Artist: Lone Justice
Year of Release: 1985
What’s up with the Cover? Lone Justice, posing like they are an English pop band from the sixties instead of an American country band from the eighties.
In addition to appearing displaced from her own time and genre, Maria McKee looks like she’s having an issue with her face. Or maybe someone has asked about her face and she’s currently in the process of dreamily replying, “what? Is there…something wrong with my face…? Am I awake?...Am I dreaming?”
You’re awake, Maria and we only have the photographer until 2:30. Try to focus.
How I Came To Know It: I heard of these guys on a list of alternative country albums a couple years ago and checked them out. I do not remember them the first time around.
How It Stacks Up: This is my only Lone Justice album, so it can’t really stack up.
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
Lone Justice was one of those bands that never fulfilled their considerable promise. They disbanded after just two albums, with singer-songwriter off to Maria McKee off to pursue a solo career. However, their first record still holds up after all these years, despite a few minor mishaps on production values. I’ve checked out the other Lone Justice record (as well as a bunch of McKee’s solo stuff) looking for more gems, but I just keep coming back to their eponymous debut.
The music is a mix of rockabilly, country and good old rock and roll. Old school songs like “Don’t Toss Us Away” sound like they’d be at home on seventies country radio, sit comfortably alongside up-tempo Tom Petty style rock numbers like “East of Eden”.
The Tom Petty connection is more than just notional; Heartbreaker keyboardist Benmont Tench plays on the record, and Tom Petty and Mike Campbell cowrote the album’s single, “Ways to Be Wicked”.
“Ways to be Wicked” is the album’s best song and deserved a better fate than to peak at #29 on the US rock charts. It has a good combination of grit and heartache and while she didn’t write it, Maria McKee’s honky tonk barroom vocals suit it well and bring it to life. McKee is a big part of what makes the record succeed. She doesn’t have same strength and bold tone of Neko Case, but she has the same brassy quaver.
McKee also writes some of the better tracks, including the raucous “After the Flood” and the anthemic “Pass It On”. Bass player Marvin Etzioni also does some solid writing, notably the record’s final track, the reverent and hymnal “You Are the Light.”
The big issue with this record is the production, which suffers from a malaise that claimed many records in 1985. It sounds tinny and distant, like it was recorded in a studio lined with old oil drums. McKee’s vocals are already a bit wispy by nature, and the almost total lack of a bottom end in the production does her no favours. Despite his stellar career, this was a sub-par showing for the much-lauded Jimmy Iovine.
There are also moments where McKee sounds more like she’s performing rather than inhabiting the song. The delivery is probably exactly what is called for in live performances (interestingly, she has released many live albums over the years) but the studio requires more balance between the energy of a live show and the internal pathos of the song. Ease off and draw your audience in to you. McKee nails the balance on “You are the Light” and I would have liked to see a bit more of that on other tracks.
For all that, Lone Justice has something going here, and while McKee has had a long and prolific solo career since, I would have liked to see where the band would have taken their sound if they’d got over the sophomore slump, and stuck it out a little longer
Best tracks: After the Flood, Ways To Be Wicked, Sweet Sweet Baby (I’m Falling), Pass It On, You Are the Light
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