Customer Reviews

Let's Just Stay Here [Vinyl]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Full of late night driving, drinking in bars and the requisite trainwrecks of lust and love - this album has been on repeat in my car since the day I got it back in October. NQ Arbuckle and Carolyn Mark come together in a fashion that is musically muted and explosive. The vocals work perfectly together, the songs are a good mix of mid tempo out on the range feel with jumpin good alt country toe tappers. The musicianship is rivalled only by the songwriting and simply - I adore this album. It's that charming drunken friend at the bar that always turns the volume up a notch and makes everything more fun.

Take the best of (late) X, Warren Zevon and throw in some Bonny Prince Billy and I think that captures the sound of this CD (similar in spirit, if not sound, to Drive By Truckers too). So even if this is not a 100% original sound, I think that they are doing it better than has been done in the past. Great CD. Enjoy!

"Let's Just Stay Here" is a album by Carolyn Mark & NQ Arbuckle, and before a friend shared this one with me, I had never heard of either. Now I'm on the hunt for more by both.

Carolyn Mark has the voice of a siren. I would follow that sound into the heart of the sun. I've learned that NQ Arbuckle is a Toronto-based alt-country band, and the other voice here is their frontman Neville Quinlan. He has a fine voice, full of worn leather and chilly dawns, and his precisely nuanced enunciations prove a bit startling to my too-long-in-Georgia ears used to a drawling twang in this type of music. But I'm hooked.

This band does a great job playing for Ms. Mark, as they hit their marks crisply without being ornate or corny. Actually, they nail the same prairie vibe found in some of Neil Young's sparser, folksier tunes without being in the least copycats or sounding ironic. When Marks and Quinlan share and merge vocals, the songs really leap to life. No doubt she is the better singer, but their joint earnestness here makes songs about strained marriages, lonely lovers, and curmudgeonly men both heartbreaking and disarming.

Clearly one of the better 2009 recordings that I missed till now. . .