By Daniel Westover I really have no idea how to review this album, so Iâll cut to the chase: go buy it. I know itâs only June, but this is already my favorite album of the year, at the minimum. The reason why itâs so impossible to review? Itâs all over the map, musically, and every song is great in its own right, so it canât be summed up into a comparison with anything else. So, Iâm going to give it my best shot, and feel free to keep reading, but do so knowing that every moment you spend reading my review will be a moment you canât enjoy listening to this album. The band is comprised of C. Gibbs (Motherwell Johnston is a pseudonym) backed by Tim Kuhl on drums, Matt Brandau on Bass, and Phil Sterk on pedal steel guitar. The opening number, âUnchaperoned,â evokes memories of New Orleans, the Memphis Horns, and Prince, and, like many of the songs on his album, knows how to build and balance the arrangements. âFourth of Julyâ follows up sounding nothing like it: aggressive guitar, staccato riffs, growling vocals. Next is âCordelaine,â and you would now think youâre listening to a country band. Slow; great vocals, and a pedal steel that has now been dialed up in the mix. (I swear â put this one CD in your player at a party? People will assume that you have it on âshuffleâ and just have really good taste.) â Cold Bikramâ continues the country theme, a bit faster, and lulls you into complacency when it meets âMurmer and Belt,â which you think is going to be a gentle ballad â until it transforms into a raging anger fest worthy of System of a Down at their punkiest. âAidanâ and it reprise form a a sandwich around âOne In a Million, â almost as if you were seeing the band live â country to ballad and back. The one low point of the album is âVegan Feast,â which I want to assume is an oxymoronic joke, because it makes it fit perfectly with itâs lilting traveling minstrel feel, and, being the omnivore I am â I get it: vegan feast. It fits perfectly. The album closes with âSlow.â And nothing you have heard up to this point will prepare you for it. Yes, it is âslow" and it is also an epic guitar workout where vocals take the backseat to a mix of Tom Morello, Jimi Hendrix, and Neil Young; itâs intoxicating, and makes you want to immediately hit the repeat button. Thereâs even a sly nod near the end to Hendrixâs take on the âStar-Spangled Bannerâ â itâs subtle, but itâs there. To say it was a fitting end to the album would be both an understatement and wrong â thereâs no way you could have predicted it from the rest of the album, but itâs amazing.
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