This World Just Won't Leave You Alone [Import]

The Star Room Boys | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 19, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Slewfoot
• ASIN: B00005YTRT
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,370 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. White Lies, Blue Tears

2. If I Can Ever Get It Back Again

3. Whiskey And You

4. I Can't Stand To Be Alone

5. Cocaine Parties

6. The Daydreamer

7. When I'm All The Way Down

8. The 4:05

9. I'll Play Angel

10. Bars And Stone

11. Time

12. This World Just Won't Leave You Alone

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb album of country sorrow, March 6, 2002

By 

hyperbolium (Earth, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: This World Just Won't Leave You Alone (Audio CD)

The second LP from this Athens, GA based band continues the stellar country-rock balladry of their 1999 debut. Lead vocalist and songwriter Dave Marr either has a lot of ghosts to exorcise, or a vivid imagination; possibly a bit of each. His songs string together a nearly unrelenting trail of rainy days, punctuated by only the most occasional, (and fleeting) burst of overcast.

From the opening refrain, "White Lies, blue tears, red eyes, black fears," Marr stares down his sorrows with a disarming directness. He's not the first to find poetry in misery, but the empowerment emanating from his contemplations is surprising and promising. He's not so much sad or scared, or even resigned, as he is dutiful. Faced with lost loves and busted relationships, he mulls them over until he find some shred of hope to hang on to, often little more than the very process of calling out the demons.

The band's laconic tempos are the perfect base for Marr's melancholy. The downbeat balladry brings to mind tunes from bands like Luna, The Velvet Underground, and Green on Red (especially their "Gravity Talks" LP), but with a twang. Johnny Neff's pedal steel and Phillip McArdle's guitar provide especially eloquent embroidery throughout.

"Cocaine Parties" has the sort of dragged-out tempo reminiscent of Gram Parsons. "When I'm All the Way Down" is even further down-tempo, dragging along on an end-of-the-line rhythm that suggests several too many drinks and a long cigarette ash about to sleepily fall to the floor. The album's one upbeat lyric, "Daydreamer," finds Marr rolling down the road towards happiness, yet not quite there.

Whether you're commiserating with a fellow downtrodden soul, or simply feeling better in comparison, the lyrical bleakness, and the matching tempo and timbre of the accompaniment, is surprisingly un-depressing. This is a fine album, whose charms grow with each repeated play.

4-1/2 stars, if Amazon allowed fractional ratings.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nice stuff, March 4, 2002

By 

Hillis (Chicago, Il.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This World Just Won't Leave You Alone (Audio CD)

Subtle vocals,tight timely instrumentation,and lyrics sometimes stark and unsparing as that moment when the lights go on at closing time(try Cocaine Parties or When I'm All the Way Down).These songs of experience are not for the belly button,songs-R-us set,but if you've been around the block a few times,you just might like them.A beautiful honest disc.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not their best, June 14, 2003

By 

Kevin M. Waltman (Tuscaloosa, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: This World Just Won't Leave You Alone (Audio CD)

The day the Star Room Boys called it quits was the worst day for music in the last few years. Bless these boys.

This isn't as great as their debut, though. While "Cocaine Parties" and a few other tracks are as heart-breaking as country can get, it doesn't have the relentless excellence as "Lonely Men and Women."

I remember attending the release show for this ... what a great live act the SRBs were. If you like good, old-timey, heartfelt country, get this ... but not before you own their brilliant debut.