The Righteous Hillbillies - Two Wheels
Down a Lost Highway
These sorts of albums used to be
commonplace. Our popular music world once rang out with much more than just an
assortment of pop releases all revolving around the same narrowly defined
melodic conceits, the same regurgitations of pop’s long standing subjects, and
pandering to the lowest common denominator. Once upon a time the popular music
world hosted both the empty pop idols and a substantive variety of musical
genres that remained faithful to their respective forms while still affording
the recording artists with an opportunity to find exciting and highly
personalized variations of the formula within which they work. The fourth album
from The Righteous Hillbillies, Two Wheels Down a Lost Highway, harkens back to
a time when bands sported their familiarity with the past as a badge of honor
instead of a source of shame. Most importantly, however, that badge of honor
has its own distinctive color here; it’s blues, but it’s blues as understood by
the five members of The Righteous Hillbillies.
Many fans will hear that their
understanding of the genre is total. “Rollin’” benefits immensely from drummer
Barret Harvey’s great sense of time and he keeps things percolating thanks to
the steady series of rolls that keep the song moving. “Throwing Stones” isn’t nearly
as light-footed and airy as the opener, but Harvey keeps all of these songs
moving with a loose limbed swing that never lets the songs sink into hamfisted
theatrics. Brent James’ singing on Two Wheels Down a Lost Highway hits the
highest peak with the title song and the best part of the track is how James’
singing follows the music rather than trying to overcome or outshine it. Every
song on the album has an ideal length, but the title song plays out in such an
imaginative way that it signals a possible new direction for the band’s
songwriting. “Down to Memphis” turns the album back towards a much more
traditional slant, but the track shares the same space with the band’s other
originals in the sense that it doesn’t lack originality, yet clearly understands
the tradition within which it works. Nick Normando’s slide playing is a big
reason why many of these tracks are so successful and there are few where that
element is more key to the final result than this song.
They dive even deeper into gutbucket blues
on the growling “Call Me a Doctor”. Some listeners might hear this song as a
pose, but their reactions are shallow. Instead, a closer listen to both the
lyrics and the inspired band performance reveals a collection of musicians with
great chemistry and the ability to transform the traditional into something all
their own. “Drama Zone” is another of the album’s hard hitters and hinges on
Normando’s outsized blues riffing, but James’ vocal brings a musicality that
might otherwise be missing to this banging performance. The Righteous
Hillbillies wrap up their fourth studio album with the acoustic blues “Rock
Salt & Nails”, a typically downtrodden country crawl complete with one of
the more soulful vocals from James on this release. This is powerful, often heady
stuff that has some familiarity with listeners, but is played with such
reckless abandon and even a willingness to take chances that one cannot help
but admire it.
9 out of 10 stars
Scott Wigley
No comments:
Post a Comment