The Airing of Grievances |
The Monitor
I can’t stop listening to this album.
Easily the best album of 2010 so far. It brings to mind the
unbridled energy and fury of early Replacements—fun
that was somehow serious at the same time. Mix in the prog adventures
of early Trail
of Dead and, of course, a liberal dash of homestate hero
Bruce Springsteen (and
his offspring like The Hold Steady
and fellow Jerseyites, The
Gaslight Anthem and The Wrens)
and you have the inferiority complex that accompanies all Garden
Staters (Bon Jovi excluded) mixed
with a loose rock and roll concept album based around the Civil
War. Oddball spoken quotes from the likes of Abraham Lincoln
and Adams with songs broken into chapters and repetitious group
choruses make the album at times seem like a highfalutin drunken
brawl. Going against the punk grain, there are several eight
and a half minute songs and one topping out at fourteen! But
the songs shift and snake and breakdown and the lead singer’s
kind of singing, billy goat moan brings what should be a mess
of an album into ultimate clarity. And this is why I can’t
stop listening to this thing--every spin brings something new
and unnoticed and crushes all the stuff I thought was good since
I first heard Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. |
Musical Connections:
Real Estate
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