Review Summary: I don't feel and I feel great.
There’s a fan video of previous release’s
Dramamine which is simply distorted footage of a car driving along Nevada’s Route 50, dubbed “The Loneliest Road in America”; it’s perfect.
The Lonesome Crowded West is a hard pill to swallow sometimes, because your head is pressed against that glass, your teeth are rank tobacco and your heart is sinking.
It has the sound of a group of wayward vagrants sat on upturned buckets, playing already battered instruments; the guitar strings spidering off the top from careless wrapping. They play with a jaunt and abandon barely contained by the verses, finally bursting forth with guitar's screeching and throats already hoarse from yelping: god knows these songs know how to let loose.
Doin’ the Cockroach sounds like blistered fingers,
Cowboy Dan becomes an anthem, hell:
Trailer Trash and
Styrofoam Boots have five minutes of just straight jamming over the riff because the boys liked the way it sounded so they ground it into the dirt.
It's the sound of driving away from the city but the tarmac grew too fast and now the city is everywhere. Stories of big businesses with bigger buildings, a rat race that refuses to flinch and the desire for something less in a bygone time. The music’s unmistakeable southern influences evoke the want, longingly painting rose-tinted visage of bible belt-esque communities in simpler times, and it seems like holding on to this naive mirage hurts more than it helps.
Bankrupt on Selling stripped back acoustic sounds like giving up, and it wouldn’t have to if nostalgia wasn’t so tempting.
The Lonesome Crowded West isn't all a depressive decry of the new world, it’s just the story of being really, really tired: spent too long squinting at colours too bright, cars too fast and mouths too loud. That when there's too many people it start to feel like there's none at all. That sometimes you just have to get away to look at the stars, but getting away keeps getting harder.
