Like Bill said, mopey alt-country (written and performed by a bunch of lame hippies).
So it’s 1970, and this dude is hanging out on his front porch in Ala-Cali-Tucky, listening to the crickets. He’s a really deep guy, you know, really in tune with the planet, and it’s all mellow. It’s true that he’s made it down to the worse half of a bottle of Southern Comfort, but it’s still cool, man, because he’s used his time machine to kidnap the instrumentalists from Dieselhed, and they’re out there on the porch with him. They weren’t so cool with it at first, but he shared his Quaaludes, and now it’s all mellow. They play, and he and his old lady sing along.
Instrumentals are pleasant, sometimes boring. Few volume or tempo variations. Flat droning vocals (they sound like a 45 being played at 33 rpm) begin to irritate quickly. Very slow tempos. At around 5 minutes, most tracks are about 3 ½ minutes too long. No FCC’s.
Track 1: One channel is a lot louder than the other. Slide guitar. Prominent percussion-simple but likeable. Strong beat. Slow strummy intro and interlude. The lyrics are not so great, but they are sung so slowly that it’s hard to concentrate on their meaning (about 3 seconds per syllable!).
Track 2: Tambourine. Trippy lyrics are more intelligible than in the first track, but not more engaging (e.g. All oceans will rise / past fence lines / Starblanket river child / give us the smile). There’s a pause in the middle. Nice instrumental bridge. Tempo picks up incrementally near the end.
Track 3: Nice slide guitar intro. Cool quiet squeaky action on the strings. Would be nice without the vocals.
Track 4: No vocals, but strangely not good. Monotonous prominent percussion. Repetitive.
Track 5: Male/female vocal duet. Repetitive accompaniment.
Track 6: Nice slidey intro. Picky guitar (sounds acoustic but actually isn’t, I think). The vocals are making me want to take a handful of sleeping pills. Cool instrumental bridge. Slide guitar is great here. Lyrics aren’t as ridiculous as usual.
Track 7: Almost no merciful instrumental intro. Singing is more flat and annoying and slurred than usual. Multisinger chorus with a very vaguely gospelly sound near the end.
Track 8: Whoa! A different guitar sound. Muted slow vibrato! Instrumental. Cool jazz drums. Too short! Play this one.
Track 9: Slidey and strummy again. Exclusively female vocals. Possibly less annoying than the guy if just because less heard elsewhere. Very prominent strummy guitar. Slidey instrumental bridge. Repetitive. The crickets go on for a long time at the end (hence the nearly 8 minute run time-song ends at about 4:02 counting backwards ) They are on a very short loop.
-Kathryn (7/20/04)