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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Don't You Know It's Bad Luck To Be Superstitious?, December 17, 2005
If I had to categorize this album, I'd call it Country Goth. It mixes strains of Hank Williams and Buddy Holly with the despairing wail of Marilyn Manson. The stronger songs on this disk are sonically compelling even as they force you to bathe in dread and marinate in morbidity. Even at the end, when the group takes on the old hillbilly spiritual "Wayfaring Stranger," their sound bespeaks a godless world in which death is the best we can hope for. Where this album succeeds, it succeeds spectacularly.
That said, I still can't bring myself to recommend this CD to newbies.
This album has some real treasures on it. Tracks like "Who's To Say," "Another Lost Summer," and "Someday" make hopelessness seem like a valid choice. The biblically stark instrumentation, reminiscent at times of Bob Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" album, is gorgeous and effectively carries the theme from the songs, of a narrator who has given up on human contact.
But other songs, like "Hopeless Waltz" and "Do You Trust Me," feel self-indulgent. The whole middle of the album is at almost exactly the same tempo, lapsing into vacant mood music. The two longest songs on the disk, "So Long Cruel World" and "Jack On Fire," aren't supported by the lyrics or the music and feel like they're doubling back on themselves. This is music for marching in place and it doesn't bear up to repeated listening.
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$6.99
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