Customer Reviews

Up the Country

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

 

 

This album is crammed with songs about hitting the open road, building bonfires on the banks of lakes, staying young and sharing that hippie-travelling-sixties zeitgeist. The feel is very collective, with no real leader, and no lead-singer. Up The Country takes the same look at sixties folk as Belle and Sebastian did on their seminal If You're Feeling Sinister, but with more of an eye on the burgeoning country-rock of Gram Parsons and The Byrds with a nod to the vocal delivery of Lee Hazlewood. While Stuart Murdoch takes a decidedly sophisticated literary take on the song lyric, trying to fashion candid tragic love stories out of 4 minute songs, the lyricists on Up The Country, put a premium on the innocence of the Sixties "love" generation, that is before they lost it. The lyrics are however written by people too young to have experienced that innocence so the tone is reverential. Besides the occasional female voice and absence of a pedal steel this album is not unlike recent alt-country/neo-folk groups like Palace or The Beachwood Sparks. The comparisons to Belle and Sebastian are not imagined, on two occasions I took a double take. The first track Duck Pond sounds right off of Belle and Sebastian's latest album but decidedly better with it's throaty mumble, simple percussion, thick electric strums and a warm Fender Rhodes. It also has a semi-blue-eyed soul chorus and a nice outro solo. Track 5 Cannon Beach has a nice little flute/melodica bit snatched right off of Stars of Track and Field. If it's a slow and melancholy song that really gets you going then it's the love-lorn Ballad of a Sometimes Traveler. This track out-Oldham's the Bonnie Prince with its wrist-slitting slow pace, and depressively beautiful slide solo. If you're a fan of the uncomplicated honesty of Lee Hazlewood or Skip Spence, or the collective, communal comfort of Once by The Tyde you should probably order this record right now.

The key to enjoying this album is freeing yourself of the notion that the Sixth Great Lake and The Essex Green are the same band. The latter, which released a CD and EP in 1999 and 2000, combined slowed-down psychedelic music with straightfoward pop for a 1960s-era sound. The Sixth Great Lake features mostly Essex Green members, but the music is downbeat, darkly acoustic and as close to country, in some spots, as early Wilco. Some similarities between the bands remain, including Sasha Bell's flute playing, occasional group harmonies and the intros to "You Make the Call" and "Shade of Love," which sound a lot like the intros to "Bald" and "Chester" from The Essex Green's self-titled EP. Highlights of "Up the Country" are "Duck Pond," the title track, "27 Forever" and "Rockin' Chair," but it's all easy to listen to without lapsing into easy listening. This isn't speeding-down-the-highway, singing-along-with-your-best-friends music. Listen to it alone, after dark, when you need to downshift and relax, and you'll be quite pleased with the results.

There are just a handfull of records that are pretty much perfect from start to finish- ones that don't cling to b-sides and have enough solid a-sides to round out a very full album. "Up the Country" is one of those albums for me. I bought the cd at an Essex Green show during the SXSW festival in Austin (I hadn't heard them before, but was intrigued by the anglophilic name). The album didn't grab me right away, but after only 4-5 listens, it became one of my favorites. I can't think of any song I would leave out. I love all of 'em. Whoever put together the sequencing of the songs did a very good job. The songs flow beautifully from one to the next. I have since bought some Essex Green cds and have enjoyed them as well. But there's still just something special about The Sixth Great Lake that's hard to replicate.

The 6GL album is by far this groups best album yet. This is their 3rd album, and their 3rd release under a different band name! The 60's pop influence is pretty much gone on this release - think late 60's folk / country music. Its very very laid back, but it has very strong melodies and memorable tunes. Excellent album. See them live - they put on an amazing show!

That song "across the northern border" has been in my head for about 6 years- I have no idea how I heard it first- perhaps college radio over lake champlain? I never heard it more than 2-3 times, but I have hummed the tune for so long that I finally today decided to try to remember the words, and magically, the web led me here to buy it. Wow. Its as good as I remember it. I love the female voice. It's authentic and natural. Would have done well at Woodstock as much as today. At least buy the "northern border" song at the very least.