Review: Desert City Soundtrack

Desert City Soundtrack
““Funeral Car””
(Deep Elm)

Nice cover art. The front is a lone blurred figure walking away in a concrete corridor. The back is a stark POV shot looking down a rusted railroad track into a muddy brown desert landscape. It serves as a metaphor for the fractured Americana that goes back in literature in the works of Steinbeck, Sinclair, Wolfe even someone like the overlooked Studs Terkel. That’s not to say this record is literary, or rises to the level of Sinclair or Wolfe, but that’s the image this music evokes in my head. The continual playing out through several generations of the drama of modern America and American roots music. “My Hell” opens with tentative piano and trumpet, suggesting a laconic presence, but it doesn’t take them long to raise their voices and belt out harsh, homey songs like “Drawn And Quartered” and “Dying Dawn.” The wondrous, explosive noise of  “Something About A Ghost” is what a lot of bands in this general musical vicinity try to accomplish, but can’t quite achieve.  I hear moments of shared brain chemistry with other bands on “Take You Under”, but it’s nothing more than brief coincidence. Cory Gray’s steady piano on “These Games We Play” is a counterpoint to the sonic assault of the crescendos. “Second Sickness” quiets down with acoustic guitar and a twangy melody with a morning after vocal. “Fields Landing” goes off completely on it’s own and joins the art club. “Casket” is a little charmer, with Gray’s piano winding around itself like an Escher design. The road to the American Dream is built with lies and graft, paved with broken promises and shattered hopes, and it’s dotted with piles of garbage and ugly people. Along the way you need a soundtrack to keep you company. This band has made one of those records.