The Foo Fighters' self-titled debut (1995)
(July 4, 1995)
Review:
Top Two Tracks:
“This is a Call” & “I’ll Stick Around”
By Jim Fusco:
Cory Brown is a songwriter with quite the pedigree. Growing up in California (my personal favorite breeding ground for musicians), he had his father Barry (of the 70s band Morning) to look up to while he learned to play guitar and write songs. Clearly, he picked something up from the genre of music that his father helped pioneer: the melodic tunes and soft-rock style is in great form on Cory’s 2012 debut album, “Days In A Life”. But, Cory’s music still sounds fresh and relevant today. His songwriting ability and style will fit well on any contemporary rock station.
This may be the debut album for Cory Brown as a solo artist, but he’s garnered some success already in his young career with a band called 7th Direction. Clearly, Cory’s first solo album allowed him to express himself more- the songs on “Days In A Life” are introspective and poignant. They’re the kind of songs that would only sound right on a solo record. It’s kind of like Brian Wilson when he made “Pet Sounds”- even members of the Beach Boys have said that “Pet Sounds” was essentially a Brian Wilson solo record. And they were correct- with the raw emotion and personal tales of longing, as in “Days In A Life”, it’s work that comes from the heart of only one person.
My favorite track on the album is “Her Eyes”. The guitar hook and the well-crafted unique harmonies on the chorus really make this a stand-out track. The track features just the right amount of that Crosby, Stills, and Nash semi-country-rock feel with the great guitar soloing throughout. The track just begs for multiple listens. I have a feeling I’ll be listening to “Her Eyes” for quite a while.
One theme I noticed throughout the whole album is the theme of traveling. In many tracks, from “Wingman”, “Grass on the Highway”, and “Lacy Ann”, Cory weaves in visions of traveling. He talks about driving across the country and even living life on “overdrive”. He asks various people not to leave him and travel away, but also talks about the youthful need to run away. As a songwriter myself who has gone through those same emotions early in life, I can definitely relate. And, with Cory’s God-given talents, his songs and subject matter will only get more complex and interesting as time goes on.
Cory Brown’s music, tour dates, and bio can all be found on his website at http://corybrownmusic.com. And, make sure to go get “Days In A Life” on iTunes right now by clicking here!
By Chris Moore:
RATING: 4.5 / 5 stars
Some of my favorite bands kicked off their careers with mediocre debuts (think: Bob Dylan) — some overrated at that (like August and Everything After & Horehound) — and others with terrible and/or terribly ho-hum debuts that betrayed little of the excellent work that was to follow (cough, nudge… The Wallflowers).
While some have accomplished it (the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pearl Jam, and Barenaked Ladies come to mind), it is not often that a new band hits a home run on their first attempt.
The time has come to add another to that brief, auspicious list: namely, Bad Books.
As with the Thorns’ excellent debut, Bad Books has experience and range working in its favor. The band is comprised of solo artist Kevin Devine and (what is essentially all of) the band Manchester Orchestra. The resulting album tempers the band’s all-out indie/alternative rock sound with Devine’s folk-influenced style.
With any such collaboration, the danger is that the whole will either sound too similar to the work that the members have produced previously or that it will come across as a forced attempt to cover new ground.
Bad Books manages to avoid both extremes.
Bad Books feels cozy, simple even. Nothing here that will challenge your previously held opinions about what good music should sound like. Yet, simultaneously, Bad Books is expansive, spanning from the spacey ambiance of “How This All Ends” to the stripped down acoustic “The Easy Mark & The Old Maid” to the crunchy guitar-driven rocker “Baby Shoes.”
And that’s only the first three tracks.
Bad Books (Bad Books, 2010)
The pinnacle of the album is indisputably at the beginning of “Side B,” or track six for all you downloaders and the handful of you CD buyers out there. “You Wouldn’t Have to Ask” clocks in at under two minutes, but, in its short span, it accomplishes much. There is no intro: the song kick-starts with lush harmonies, clean, subtle guitar work, and a steady drumbeat. This builds up to a more driving beat with excellent drum fills, crunchier electric guitars at the front of the mix, and what amounts to a duet between Devine and Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull. (The music video, based on the Everly Brothers’ 1964 Shindig! performance of “Gone, Gone, Gone,” aptly sets the band’s contemporary indie sound against a black and white backdrop of a bygone era.)
This partnership is what seems to propel the album, each contributing half of the songs to this joint effort. There is the nearly unhinged emotion of “Please Move,” transitioned to smoothly from the broken-down vulnerability of “I Begged You Everything.” Extremes are placed back-to-back, and yet it works. The arrangement is brilliant, not only on the song level but also on the level of the album as a whole.
And to be certain, lyrically, Devine and Hall have composed some of the strongest songs of the year, seemingly simple songs like “You’re a Mirror I Cannot Avoid” and “Mesa, AZ” that reject the concept of background music. These songs, as it often is with the good ones, require multiple listens to comfortably ascribe meaning. The allusions, when made, are not always readily apparent, the most notable probably being a reference to Shakespeare’s Henry V. This is original, fluid writing. I dare say this is poetry.
It is thus shocking — and unforgivable — that the packaging is less than minimalist. A lackluster cover (my apologies to the band members who created these sketches, images that would have made for fascinating insets within the packaging) is about all there is. A dismal one-fold covering for this CD with no booklet and no lyrics and no more than these ten brief songs: this is all there is.
Bad Books is one of the premier albums of the year — top three material — and yet the packaging is non-existent. The lyrics are unacknowledged. This I will never understand, because — I’m sorry — if a band like Jukebox the Ghost can mass-produce a colorful, three-fold digipack with a thoughtful design and complete lyrics, then seasoned folks like these either deserve more options from the higher-ups or we deserve more effort from them.
If we as listeners don’t “deserve” it, then certainly this beautiful music deserves more.
By Chris Moore:
RATING: 3 / 5 stars
I’ll never forget the day I first read the biography of Mudcrutch.
It was a surreal set of circumstances — Mudcrutch was a band that had gone unnoticed by most and been forgotten by those few who had taken an interest during their five year run from 1970 to 1975. They had formed as a small town band, moved out to Los Angeles in pursuit of a record contract, and broken apart under the pressures of their record label and the departure of band members.
A year later, three of the Mudcrutch refugees would go on to form a band that you may have heard of…
It was a tantalizing tale, and I could barely contain my excitement for this music. In some small way, I felt like I would be able — for once! — to take part in the debut release of a band I felt truly passionate about. This was not simply the unveiling of a band’s first album; this was an opportunity to be transported back in time nearly four decades to an entirely different rock and roll landscape than I’ve grown accustomed to in the new millennium.
You get the idea.
And, at least initially, Mudcrutch held up to the hype.
Mudcrutch's self-titled debut (2008)
The first song that caught my attention was “Scare Easy,” a mid-tempo number that may have Petty’s trademark vocals on it, but is clearly not your typical Heartbreakers track. If anything, it sounds more like his previous solo album, but even then, it has a unique sound.
Other tracks on the album are standouts, even amongst the considerable catalog items that Petty, Campbell, and Tench have amassed over the years. Songs like “The Wrong Thing To Do” and “Bootleg Flyer” are unique, upbeat, and very promising. “Orphan of the Storm” may be one of the best examples of what this band sounds like, blending older country and blues textures with a seventies rock and roll mentality lurking in the backbeat.
These excellent tracks notwithstanding, there are a number of tracks that suffer from that middle-of-the-road, “so what?” stupor that few can induce like Tom Petty. In fact, most of the second half of the album is forgettable, populated by a pedestrian tune from Benmont Tench, a forgettable Tom Leadon track that confirms why he fell short of the success his brother (the former Eagle) and Petty achieved, “June Apple,” and “Topanga Cowgirl.”
In fact, two of the best tracks on the album are covers: “Six Days on the Road” and “Lover of the Bayou.” The former is a pretty straightforward number, but an exemplar for country rock. The latter, co-written by Roger McGuinn (of the Byrds) and Jacques Levy (popularly known for his collaborations with Bob Dylan on 1978’s “Street Legal”), is a candidate for the best Mudcrutch performance on tape to date. Even the traditional “Shady Grove” is beautifully translated as the perfect opener.
On first listen, Mudcrutch was a joy. Track by track, I loved it. It was only after repeated listens that it began to lose its luster and fade into mediocrity. This is a case where I think my excitement for the story surrounding the band colored my perception of the music they produced.
Each time I return to it, I try to feel what I did that first week after its release in 2008, but to no avail. Even though I’ve hesitated to admit it, Mudcrutch is a three star album from what could have been — and, at least, three fifths went on to be — a five star band.
Take note of that: in music, as in life, some combinations just weren’t meant to be, no matter how much you love the individuals. You may look back and ponder what could have been.
It’s perhaps better left to the imagination.