An excellent blend of The Long Ryders and The Jayhawks, with added country and twang to give it freshness.
In the early 1990s, Stephen McCarthy and Kevin Pittman holed up together for a year in a 100-year-old bungalow. McCarthy is well known as a guitarist and vocalist for The Long Ryders, but has also played for The Jayhawks on tour and on some tracks on their latest album “Xoxo”. Pittman, originally from Reedville, on the coast of Virginia, toured up and down the East Coast with his first major band, The Dogs. This high-energy outfit had some success, for example, opening for The Kinks and Culture Club. He lived in LA for a while but then returned to Virginia, where he still lives. He formed a 70s R&B band, NRG KRYSYS, which lasted for seven years, but never released an album. In recent years, he has released solo albums “Victrola Mouth” (2019) and “Sundog” (2023).
The pair wrote a couple of dozen songs together, but the planned album was shelved, and the tapes were lost. Last year, they were found in an attic, and fourteen songs were chosen for this album. It is perhaps what you might expect- a mixture of The Long Ryders and the Beatles-influenced pop-americana of The Jayhawks. However, there is more of a country influence than with The Long Ryders, and a real twang in the guitars that gives the album a great freshness and vitality. This, along with the great melodies and hooks in the songs, makes you wonder why on earth the album was shelved in the first place.
It all starts very strongly with the catchy single ‘House Full Of Company’. With country guitar licks over jangly Byrds-like guitar, it is like a lively Long Ryders track. Both McCarthy and Pittman sing in double harmony, and this works very well. The words initially make you think of a grumpy bloke who can’t be bothered with visitors, but the pair say that it tells of trying to find peace in their bungalow when there are all the spirits from the last 100 years there.
The next two tracks, ‘No Happiness Here’ and ‘Knocking Out The Daylights’, are in a similar vein. After that, the songs generally have various americana influences, although ‘Engines’ sounds like the Beatles. A tale of someone with resilience who has survived, it has a pump organ that reminds you of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. The closer, ‘Standing In The Light’ is very strong musically, with Beatles-like vocals, beautiful harmonies, and bluesy piano.
‘Where I Wanna Be’, about finding peace and contentment with the one you love, has McCarthy on banjo to give a bluegrass feel, and this is also heard on ‘Come Back Ophelia’. The pump organ returns on this song, which tells of a relative having Alzheimer’s and becoming a stranger. The swinging ‘Shadow Blues’ is a very nice country shuffle. ‘My Last Goodbye’, where there is regret for a lost love, is made very atmospheric with the baritone guitar. The unrequited love of ‘What Lonely Means’ is made all the more heartbreaking by the twanging Telecaster and some steel guitar.
Another love song, ‘Shine’, is straight country with steel guitar, but the harmonies remind you of The Everly Brothers, as they do on ‘Walk Over Me’, with its honky-tonk piano. It is a good story of a man who has fallen for a woman who isn’t treating him so well. ‘All Broke Down’, where a broken-down car is used as a metaphor for a broken relationship, has some Fats Domino piano.
If you are a Long Ryders fan, you will really like this album; it compares very well to their last two records, “September November” and “Psychedelic Country Soul”. But if you are also a big country music fan, or alternatively, like a bit of twang, then you will find it an absolute treat.
