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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Murray Says We're Going to Take The Money..., May 29, 2008
What's not to like here with the triumphant return of Rhett Miller and his big D band of rock-alt-punk-pop slinging outlaws? All hail the Old 97's on their 7th studio LP, "Blame it On Gravity."
First let me tell you where I'm coming from. I grew up in the Dallas area and started tuning into the Old 97's special brand of Johnny Cash meets Bowie meets the Beatles...oh in the late 80's. So here we are almost 20 years later and the Old 97's are still kind of this bar room underground cultish sensation. They rock a small club like no other and are best viewed in an intimate backyard setting like the one found in Stubb's Bar-B-Que Austin, Tejas with a little rain falling for drama, Shiner Bock in hand, boots stomping the cold Texas limestone gravel underfoot.
I picked up "Blame It On Gravity," the very day it came out which is more of a rarity these days living in the times of instant downloads and drastically declining in-store music sales. What's a little band to do? Well kick the major record company to the curb, call up the band mates from both coasts (Rhett's in NYC...and either Murray or Phillip's out in La La land), meet in Dallas and get back to the spirit of the band and cut a record, indie style. That's just what the Old 97's did on "Blame It On Gravity," and their adherence to the roots of what the band has always been about shows.
You've got it all in this one. The rave-up rockers, the lonesome wail western tunes calling up ghosts of Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and the man in Black himself, and Rhett's own brand of Bowie-esque alt-country-pop. Rhett and Murray seem to be healthily grounded in thoughts about ladies and mortality in equal measure, but never to the point of taking themselves too seriously to poke fun at just about everything under the sun, even their beloved native city of Dallas.
The CD's top offering which will become a sing-along standard during their concerts is track 10, "The Easy Way." Rhett sings, "Big D, little aka the city of hate / Deep in the big black heart of the Lone Star state / If You are a good ole boy their gonna do you fine / Yeah, the easy way gets harder all the time / Speaking of love...," and Rhett, who wears his broken heart on his sleeve never fails to speak of that little four letter L word. It's a great song and for any Old 97's fan you'll find yourself wearing this song like a comfortable pair of broken-in Naconas topped by your trusty dusty Resistol hat.
And then there's the first single, "Dance With Me," which has this kind of Mexican cha-cha lounge flair thing going on. I attribute this picking up of a slightly new 97's sound possibly to the influence of the highly engaging little ban from Reno and Austin's..."The Small Stars," who the Old 97's toured with leading up to the making of this album. Check out their stuff here: Tijuana Dreams.
Back to "Blame It On Gravity." The album is capped with a familiar country beat like that found in just about every one of Johnny Cash's early tunes, with the capstone song, "The One." "The One," has all the band members as characters planning out a bank heist in California. "Ken, picked this bank at random / I said do we shoot them? / He said either one's alright." Who would have known the mainstay cornerstone of the Old 97's sound, axe-slinger Ken Bethea was such a cold-blooded outlaw? What makes the song even more fun, is the way the whole bank-robbing scenario is an extended metaphor for the Old 97's leaving their major label deal with Elektra and breaking out back on their own.
Well the boys hailing from the Lone Star state never sounded better. You're not gonna want to miss a minute of this one..."Blame It On good music, gravity or being a girl," but just get this one. ...mmw
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's very tricky business, May 14, 2008
"We just finished recording the new Old 97s album and it's really good, it's burning a hole in my pocket. I wish I could give you all a copy."
It was mid-February 2008, ironically a few days before Valentine's Day, and suitably I was thinking in the back of my mind about a girl I'd be taking to dinner in honor of that occasion. I was standing on the wood floor right in front of the stage of a club just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean and Rhett Miller was behind the mic, just the man and his acoustic guitar. The above (and I am paraphrasing but he said almost exactly that from what I recall) was his introduction to a performance of a few of the tracks from this album, Blame It On Gravity. I don't actually recall for certain which tracks he played - I remember hearing "No Baby I" and "Ride," possibly "Dance With Me." They were good, perhaps not as immediately engaging as the stuff on Too Far To Care, but they had enough depth that I knew a few listens would probably get me hooked. I remember leaving the club feeling satisfied with what I had heard. The girl, by the way, stopped seeing me shortly after Valentine's Day.
What's funny as I re-read the above paragraph is the way I associate this band's music with girls. It's no surprise. Many of their songs are about love, usually love gone wrong, and the lyrics often describe those situations with enough sensitivity and detail to put you smack dab in the middle of the narrator's life. Rhett's characters are often attractive sad sacks who mean well but are subject to their own flawed natures, causing them to mistake lust or need for love with dire consequences. When I first heard Too Far To Care, I came away feeling like I had just had a couple of tumultuous relationships in the span of the hour it was playing for. I happened to discover this band during a period of my life when I was going through some relationship troubles of my own (very similar to the protagonists of these songs) and the 97s' albums became a constant companion for me.
This band also grew with me as I matured. I happened to love 2004's Drag It Up, a more measured and mature statement which dealt with personal concerns beyond just the standard love-gone-wrong fare. This album had some grander themes, about how life can steer us in the wrong direction if we let it, and how love can change over time. I did miss the charging tempos and funny stories from the earlier years, but of course I still had the earlier albums and the band's live performances as old standbys.
So along came this album, which I just managed to buy the day it was released (I had completely forgotten this one was coming out until I checked the web, and then ran over to Best Buy right before they closed to pick it up). The critics seemed to be calling it a quasi-return to form, and one listen made it clear why they said so. It rocks harder than its predecessor, and resurrects more of the band's country roots than any album they have released since since Too Far To Care. It seems like the band has accepted their cult status after their bid for mainstream success with Satellite Rides, and is settling in as purveyors of the kind of country-power pop hybrid that brought them their fan base in the first place. However, this is also the work of the middle-aged rock band that made Drag It Up, in that the approach is again somewhat measured. For me, the blend works well.
There are some rockers such as "The Fool" and "Early Morning" which take you right back to the days of Too Far To Care, and there are also slower numbers like Murray Hammond's beautiful "Color Of A Lonely Heart Is Blue" (one of his best tracks ever and a real stunner of a song), yet the bulk of the album passes by at an easy, self-assured mid-tempo pace. The best tracks are collected at the beginning and end, with the slightly more generic numbers sandwiched in the middle. Although many of these are devoted to the usual themes of romance gone wrong, the band expands its reach to cover such topics as theological themes ("Here's To The Halcyon") and days gone by (the aforementioned masterpiece from Murray Hammond, as well as "The One"). The relationship songs are perhaps less immediately personal than in the band's earlier years (these are married guys after all, probably no longer given to carousing) but deal with these sorts of themes in a way that reveals insight into the human condition nonetheless. "You got to be a fool/to be a fool in love" sings Rhett Miller on the opening track, reminding us that "love is gonna come" if you "coax it out." Such a reassuring sentiment may be the opposite of some of his earlier lines ("I believe in love but it don't believe in me," for example) but the optimism is no less sincere than anything that preceded it.
So to end this review, this album is a logical progression from what came before for this band, and bodes well for their future. For me, it also came along at just the right time, and serves as a reminder that just because we grow more mature, we don't have to lose the things that made our younger years worthwhile. In fact, the added perspective just deepens the experience.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Solid, fun effort from Old 97's, May 13, 2008
The first new album in four years from Dallas based band the Old 97's is a pleasant, relaxed affair, a mixed bag of pop rock along the lines of Big Star and later Replacements, and alt-country and Americana flavored tunes. The latter material works best, as on the opening track, "The Fool," and later tracks, "Early Morning," "The Easy Way," "Here's To The Halcyon" and "Color Of A Lonely Heart Is Blue," but the power pop of "Dance With Me" is a highlight, too. The most memorable songs are weighted towards the second half of Blame It On Gravity, where the band seems to settle into a comfortable groove. It's a solid effort from a band now celebrating fifteen years of making music, and still finding ways to have fun doing it.
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