Review Summary: Not your average country album from not your average Cyrus.
As the son of Billy Ray Cyrus and brother of Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana), you’d be excused for assuming that Braison Cyrus is just another pop-country artist who’s been handed stardom on a silver platter thanks to his lineage. While that sort of thing happens all the time in music, Braison seems intent on blazing his own trail.
Javelina is nothing like the other music that’s come out of the Cyrus family; it’s an indie-rock/Americana hybrid, residing closer to names like Band of Horses or My Morning Jacket than anything resembling ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and ‘Party in the USA’. It’s country music with an imagination, opting for misty seaside tales and moonlit poetry over tractors and divorce. The result is an unexpectedly brilliant debut from a man who, despite his name, appears destined to fly below the radar.
Javelina’s opening track immediately accentuates how different Braison’s music is compared to his pop-leaning relatives. ‘Don’t Hold Your Breath’ is a spellbinding opener, featuring blissfully harmonized backing vocals from Old Sea Brigade and Victoria Bigelow while Braison’s wispy verses sound as though they’re suspended between realms. “Don't stare too long, it might trap you tonight” he warns, and it’s difficult to discern whether he’s talking about some mystical force or
Javelina; although at times they prove to be synonymous. ‘Autumn Leaves’ is a pedal steel driven crooner with memorable but highly cryptic verses like “children drowning in autumn leaves / the mountains crumbled into the sea”, “you see the sky from your living room / the moon's the bride and the sun's the groom”, or simply “is this the end that it's all coming to?” I’m not going to pretend that everything coalesces into a grander message, but the enigmatic nature of Braison’s writing is part of what makes
Javelina feel so ephemeral and mysterious – like fog that takes shape over the coast only for a moment and then vanishes into the morning light. The song leads into what is possibly the album’s strongest cut in ‘Disappear’, which sees pianos subtly join an all-acoustic backdrop before the whole thing builds to an electric guitar riff and a triumphantly repeated outro of “the morning will come again.” If
Javelina has one song that seems to capture the essence of Braison Cyrus’ craft, that would be it – ‘Disappear’ is ambiguous (“Got these markings on your hand, in a language that I don't understand”), but also heartening and infectious.
Cyrus continues to demonstrate his unique craft with ‘Ghost Dance’, a muted ballad comprised primarily of pedal steel and Braison’s forlorn verses. His lyrical abilities across
Javelina are admittedly hit-or-miss, but on this song he really taps into something poetic and otherworldly: “Her words fell pure as snow, on the empty hearts below / And I mourned for when they broke, at the ghost dance.” Almost as if to score that pain with an extended outro, ‘Revolver’ is a five-and-a-half minute instrumental track that arrives on its heels as a guitar-driven breath of fresh air; injecting life and energy into the album’s midsection while illustrating Braison’s multifaceted skill set. The back half of
Javelina begins to trek into some more traditional/standard country-rock tunes, which is slightly disappointing considering the atmospheric depth of the first five songs. Luckily, any relative let-down is cushioned by the fact that these songs are still pretty great; ‘Ordinary Places’ has some of the album’s best drumming and its first true guitar solo, while ‘When You Wake Up’ – one of the first songs that Braison ever wrote – possesses a very catchy chorus and also features the album’s first use of brass instruments. ‘Northern Sky’ and ‘Black Water’ are slightly forgettable but ultimately inoffensive, with Steve Earle’s feature on the latter passing by relatively unnoticed. The closer, ‘Across the Great Plains’, ends things on an emphatically strong note though; it’s a swaying, anthemic closer which laments the futility of war: “As the war went marching by, it didn't matter who won or lost / Or the damaged caused / Cause they tore our brothers and our sisters apart.” The closing minutes of the song whisk
Javelina away into a sea of jazzy brass horns, concluding the experience in stark contrast to the hushed, mystifying way in which it arrived.
All in all,
Javelina is a resounding success for the direction that it points Braison Cyrus’ career in. If he continues to write his own story and resist the temptation to cave in to the expectations of his family’s mainstream success, he will eventually make a name for himself.
Javelina is satisfyingly distinctive in its own right – it’s not exactly pioneering new ground, but it possesses a rough-around-edges folk-rock feel; almost like indie-country. Whatever you want to call it, the sound here is an ideal fit for Braison’s voice and songwriting style.
Javelina has thus provided Braison with as solid of a foundation as he could possibly hope for, and it’s a debut that any fan of country/folk/Americana/indie-rock can readily sink their teeth into.
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