Customer Reviews

Shoulda Been Gold: 2001-2009

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This Los Angeles country-rock group's anthology re-imagines Big Star's hopeful album title #1 Record as a joshing (or perhaps wishful) look back through a catalog that wasn't really likely to find broad commercial fortune. A decade in the making - the band formed in 2000 - the songs cherry-pick the group's four previous releases, adding an early demo, two previously unreleased tracks, and three new recordings. The band's combination of tight country harmonies, shuffling rhythms, road-inspired topics, and flights of fiction mark them as natural-born citizens of Gram Parson's cosmic American music colony. Their music offers reverence for the twang upon which it's built, but there's also humor, tongue-in-cheek paranoia and a liberal hippie environmental ethos running through their songs.

Coming together at the tail end of the Clinton administration and flourishing artistically during eight years of Bush, the band's songwriters found plenty of grist for the lyrical social mill. They sing the praises of "Byrd from West Virginia," note his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and highlight his anti-war stance with a guitar, bass and mandolin waltz the fiddle-playing senior senator would surely appreciate. There are songs of flower-child philosophy being passed to a new generation, pot farmers living off the gifts of "Humboldt," meditative appreciations of the America's open road beauty, sun-burnt runs through the desert, tears cried for the planet's desecration (or as they label it "one sad valentine to Earth"), and ire leveled at capitalistic icons such as salesmen and self-help charlatans.

The group seems to have picked from their catalog a group of tunes that are more about people than between them. They lean towards first person articulation, songs sung to an absent `you' and songs sung at the listener. Even the separation of "Up the Grapevine" is more an interior monologue than a conversation. Their namesake tune calls to like thinkers, "if you see hawks / then maybe we should talk," seeking to gather rather than having kindred souls on hand. The protagonists aren't isolated, exactly, but neither do they seem as connected to others as the band is musically connected to one another. "Bossier City" provides a few minutes of explicit intercourse as Rob Waller trades verses and harmonizes with Carla Olson. Waller's duet with Carla Olsen on the newly waxed "Bossier City" breaks through that wall. Fans of the Flying Burrito Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Crazy Horse, Dave Alvin and the Gosdin Brothers should check this out! [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

I picked up this CD thanks to the MOJO magazine and I don't regret it. Yes, it is influenced by the Byrds and Gram Parsons' Sweetheart of the Rodeo: Legacy Edition and the best artists / bands that followed on this trail. But the band here has its own personality (and even a political agenda), as reflected in their lyrics and their liner notes. This is classic country-rock done today the interesting and entertaining way. And the song Shoulda Been Gold surely should have been a hit.

The last album by these guys was great, but I wasn't too familiar with their previous work. What a spectacular introduction this is! There's such a consistency in sound and quality here one would never know that the recordings span a decade and changes in band roster. Yet there's great variety in material, as well, which really makes in feel like a true album to new ears and not just a collection of crowd pleasers. There are unmistakable, and totally welcome, elements of country sprinkled over all of the tracks but the obviously great lead guitar is there, as well, to plant a flag for rock. Really, there's something for everybody in this set of songs.

Who are these guys and why have I never heard of them before? If you like "discovering" new old bands, this cd is for you. 17 Songs, at least 14 of which are exceptional, and no duds. I can best describe as Gram Parsons meets early Wilco but peppered with a great sense of humor. My only complaint: why aren't they touring to my hometown.