From the mailbox
bills, bills, bills,
oh, and some CDs to review
No River City
This is Our North Dakota
(Six Little Shoes, 2003)
On the first listen, This Is Our North Dakota seemed a remarkably apt title. This album was dull and boring, but after repeated attempts, it proved to be a nice blend of twang, folk, and indie-rock. The clichéd sounding drabness was mistaken due to an ear that quickly tired of alt-country. Country should begin and end with Hank Williams, but this turned out to be an incredibly strong album with great song writing and soulful lyrics.
The alt-country scene hasn't quite caught on like some thought it would. It has stuck around as a strange midpoint between indie-rock and rockabilly, and No River City manages to take its best elements, and leave obvious influences like the Jayhawks and Ryan Adams in the dust.
No River City is out of Atlanta and consists of Drew de Man, Teri Onstead and a rotating group of players behind them. De Man handles the songwriting/guitar/lead vocals, while Onstead provides incredible cello work. This, combined with her background vocals, gives the album a strong backbone.
"Visit Me" is the strongest track, which showcases their sound best. De Man sings an old tale of love and regret, and his raw but feeling vocals add believable depth. He sounds like a mellow Dave Lowery, and compliments Onstead's strings and background vocals beautifully.
Two covers are thrown in, which is disappointing for a ten-track album. One is amazing, while the other wildly misses the mark. "Running to Stand Still," from U2's The Joshua Tree, works because it is a polar opposite of the original, yet maintains U2's minimalism without sounding pretentious.
On "Who Are You?" the band has the audacity to mess with a Tom Waits tune, which should be a punishable crime.
This pathetic Tex-Mex rendition made the album hard to enjoy, hence the original position on the disc. Though the glaring error is hard to overlook, No River City has put out a convincing debut album.
- B. Lee Weaver
F-Minus
Wake Up Screaming
(Hellcat, 2003)
F-Minus isn't just the name of a band, unfortunately, it's also the grade
they deserve on this album
Their third album, Wake Up Screaming, was released in March of 2003.
Brad Logan scratches on the guitar and gives himself a sore throat yelling
into the mic; Joe Steinbrick hits his fingers on the bass; Adam Zuckert
bangs on the drums; and Erika Daking runs her fingernails across the six
string.
Wake Up Screaming consists of fast-paced chord progressions and Flash
Gordon-speed drum beating with accompanying heavy duty yelling and screaming.
The album sounds like a bad version of an early Good Riddance CD. Not
even the producer could have saved this album.
Steve Albini, who has worked with bands such as Nirvana and The Pixies,
was the producer on this album. He left most of the mistakes in on purpose.
There are missed cues and bad vocal lines left in to capture the true
feel (or unfeeling) of the band. The most interesting part of the album
is the case it comes in.
A leaflet contained inside is very artistic in the way the lyrics to
every song are laid out. Each of the song lyrics appear to be in their
first written form on small, separate sheets of paper. There is even a
very visual poster on the reverse side making it the best part of the
album. More time than the full length of the album is needed to study
this poster.
Fifteen songs and 36 minutes cover this full length, which is 36 minutes
too much. Not much else can be said about this teeth-grinding paranoia
music other then Wake up Screaming is exactly what's going to happen if
this CD is listened to for too long.
- Sean Scranton
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