Review Summary: They Lit a Fire That Wouldn't Go Out
What makes a great album? Technicality? Boundary-stretching? For me, it's simple. What makes a great album is the feeling that it gives you, the emotion that drips off of it and on to you. What it makes you think of, distant memories it conjures up. The palpable energy of each and every song, note, rhythm and beat. Maybe it's just the simplicity of
The '59 Sound that leaves much to the imagination, but every time it plays in my car, headphones, or stereo, my mind slips off into a daydream.
It's late August, on a Friday night at sunset and the temperature is neither too cool nor too hot. I'm driving by the lake with the windows down. The pathetic stereo in my car is desperately trying to squeeze every ounce of volume it can out of
High Lonesome as I sing along with it. I have no thoughts of what might have happened that day, good or bad. All I know is that I'm happy. Everything is perfect in that moment and I don't have a single care or worry to my name.
It's a feeling that I wish could stay forever, that could travel with me past the confines of my dream and into reality. It's a feeling more perfect than anything around me. Whenever I get the blues, I just put in
The '59 Sound and for even just a short time, I can be content. I’m lifted back into my sun-lit cruise along the lake and I can forget all the bad around me and be at peace for a little while.
The first time I heard
The '59 Sound, I knew it was going to stick. Not just stick in my head only to be forgotten later on, but stick with me for a while. It’s a record that doesn't seem to age a day, no matter how much you listen to it. It's not just the well-crafted hooks laden throughout every song. It's not just Brian Fallon's charismatic voice that makes you want to scream every word at the top of your lungs. Sure, these are redeeming qualities, but they can be found elsewhere too. It is the extraordinary feeling, different for everyone, but irreplaceable by anything else, that makes
The '59 Sound such a great, profound album.
