07.12.07

Toe-tapping while crying in my beer

Posted in some albums we done liked others we ain't - July 12th, 2007 at 5:19 pm by Cricket

I have this massive stack of CDs sitting next to me, and I keep shuffling through them trying to decide what to review next. A more organized person would’ve made some system: alphabetical or chronological (in the order they arrived). But it’s more fun to shuffle them around like cards. Plus, mood plays a huge part. [And laziness.--Mimi] I can’t do justice to something sad when I’m gleeful and vice versa.

What we really need is to hire a Houseboy around here so someone else can do the house stuff and make decisions for us and generally be responsible when we are not. [And who also looks hot while doing all of the above?--Daisy] Someone call Matt Damon and tell him we’ve got a job open. [I’m telling you, Craigslist. I’ll write the ad tomorrow.--Mimi]

Since I’m feckless and without direction, I was gonna just blindly grab a CD and review whatever I picked up, but then my eyes lit on the Girls, Guns & Glory CD, Pretty Little Wrecking Ball and I knew it was time for this one. [Way overdue, honestly. We suck…*insert middle school joke here*--Mimi]

This is a Boston act that our loyal reader, Timmy Mac, hooked me up with. He sent their debut album Fireworks & Alcohol, and from the first song I was sold. Hmm, I never did get around to reviewing that, so go buy it, especially for the perfection that is “Beautiful Girls” and we’ll just move on to new stuff. [That record is superlative. I had it on rotation on the stereo in the house for a week, which is unusual for me. And I even made people to listen to it when they came over. I’m not usually that proselytizing—that’s more Cricket’s gig. Buy this one.--Mimi]

A glance at the “influences” on the boys’ MySpace page makes it pretty clear that this is a band made for HCT. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, but in this case, hell yeah! we like these boys. It’s old time country, twangy and lyrically full of classic country tropes. [I’d call this rockabilly light on the screaming and heavier on the actual ‘50’s influence.--Mimi] What makes G,G & G stand out is the vocals, and percussion that is sometimes surprising, occasionally innovative, and definitely great. Music that breaks your heart and makes you want to get up and dance all at once. [A word on the vocals here: I would describe them as “romantic” in that way that old pop music in the ’50s and ‘60s sometimes was. It resonates with a whole lot more than just musicality. He sounds like he really feels the lyrics; he sells them with a sort of vibrato and whine. Sort of the thing that made Chris Isaak famous, but minus the schlock and bullshittery.--Mimi]

“All that whiskey did is put a hurtin’ in my head” from “Brown Bottle Blues” sets up the tone of the album: sorrow and the bottom of bottle in a dilapidated roadhouse somewhere. Man done wrong by his woman. Man doing his woman wrong. “Brown Bottle Blues” covers the whole spectrum of laments of man torn between drinkin’ and his woman. We know how it ends, and yet the vocals and hurtin’ country twang make us sympathetic to the age old plight of the country singing man. [Yes, it ends with you dating this guy and me getting a restraining order on him when he passes out in the bushes.--Mimi] [If you bothered to get a restraining order for every guy that passes out in your bushes...--Daisy]

“Love God Murder” pays homage to Johnny Cash both in the lyrics and the arrangement of the song. It’s the old murder ballad tale of a man who was blinded by jealousy in the heat of the moment and regretting what he’s done as he’s about to die for his abysmal crimes. Again, the tragedy relentless, and yet you can dance to this! I don’t know why that dichotomy is so satisfying in country music but it really, really works for me.

The “girls who kiss you and leave you” motif nears triteness in country music but on “Here’s to the Girls” the concept is rescued first by verses that reflect on what else is going on in the world (”For politics, religion, the corporate regime… / have got a chokehold / on the American Dream”) and by the Ward Hayden’s vocal delivery. It’s perfect wavering twangy country. Even my usual flip-flops feel like cowboy boots when I listen to music like this.

The title track, “Pretty Little Wrecking Ball” goes right for the heartbreak of an unfaithful girl. “It cuts down to the bone / to see you out there and doing fine” the lament of everyone who has been wronged and then doubly so by seeing that the person who hurt them doesn’t suffer at all. [Hahaha! Oh man, y’all jealous types kill me. Wow. Therapy, stat!--Mimi] The guitar veers closer to rock than I’d like, but again totally saved by Ward’s vocals. [Yeah, this is a rock song.--Mimi]

“Lust for Gold” is a nice little western-influenced story song about a miner seeking his fortune. Depressing is the theme of this record. Here we find that the miner’s plight is that gold can’t save him from all the things that are already wrong in his soul. [You’d think people would figure this one out sooner or later.--Mimi] This song has a great break in the middle where you can hear other miners and demons talking in the background before it breaks into what the liner notes mark as a “descent into madness.” Musically the break works very well.

How much do I love the song “Tennessee Rose”? Can I even express it? I could tell you it’s amazing, but I’d be using that word to poke at my pall Timmy Mac, ’cause he doesn’t like it so much. [That’s because girls our age in the North East use it as a catchphrase rendered something like AMAYZING! about both things of a major magnitude of suckage and things that are glorious. Personally, I find the catchphrase amusing.--Mimi] Country perfection from a northern boy. He sings about how the north will always be his home and even thought his train is finally coming through he can’t leave the place he’s settled to go find Tennessee Rose. Lost love again, though this time it’s love never known. I could make this song an anthem for an episode in my own life, but I will leave it to its own sorrow and not add mine on. As it is, it’s an excellent, old-timey, slightly folky country song. [The tone of this one is cowboy tune through and through. Get along little MBTA train!--Mimi]

The next song is called “Soft Raccoon” and I can’t decide if it’s kind of dirty or just plain silly. I actually don’t want to think too deeply about it. Raccoons are funny because they have little thumbs and bandit masks. YAY! I’m not sure exactly what this song is about except more unfaithful and/or fickle girls. If country songwriters dated reliable girls we’d perhaps have no country music at all? [This is the “Justified” break up album of Girls Guns & Glory, clearly. Someone feels hard done by, that’s for damned sure.--Mimi]

There’s a good cowboy outlaw thing going on in “Wait a Minute” as a bankrobber sings about how even as he tried he couldn’t change his life. He descends into crime when “the money got tighter and the bank foreclosed on [his] pride.” Poor cowboy, he wanted to do right by his momma, but sometimes you do wrong and you can’t recover. What he needs, clearly, is a good woman. Too bad none of those exist in sad country songs. There’s a definite wistfulness here that makes the sad tale work. Also, you guessed it, the vocal delivery is awesome.

On G, G & G’s CDBaby page, there’s a quote from singer Ward Hayden that says, “We chose a lot of takes, not because they were the best executed takes, but because they had the best feeling. Our choices were based more on performance than execution.” This shows clearly in the production. It’s not too slick or overdone. It sounds clean, tight and professional, but not so much so that you lose the real emotion of the songs. [I have to agree that the sound of this record rings very pure. It gets my approval.--Mimi]

Pretty Little Wrecking Ball is the album you pull out at party when your hipster friends have shown disdain for folks who listen to country. They’ll be toe-tapping by the second song and hopefully soon realize there are still some bands trying to carry on the good works begun by Hank Williams, carried on by Johnny Cash and Robert Earl Keen and so many others. Go get the album, just make sure you pick up a six-pack to drink and cry into. And maybe call your best girl, put on your dancin’ shoes and prove that there’s some girls who won’t do you wrong. Even if they do, you’ll always have country songs, right?

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