review of the new album...
Who says you can't go home again?
In the fickle business of music today, the story of alt-country heroes Old 97's is not a unique one. It is the story of a truly great band that has been around for over a decade. One that started out in Texas obscurity and garnered a solid national fan base through years of touring and recording. A critical reputation so stellar that even Bruce Springsteen called them one of his favorite bands. A shot at major label success that seemed inevitable, but never really materialized. A lead singer with the looks and the hooks for a promising solo career that just missed the mark. A period of "hiatus" that left them with no record deal and that lasted so long, people started to wonder...are they still around?
Well, friends and neighbors, the answer is not just yes, but Hell yes.
July 27th sees the release of their sixth CD, Drag It Up. After signing with roots-rock independent label New West (Drive-By Truckers, Slobberbone) the boys pulled up stakes and headed to Woodstock, New York and later San Diego to record with rockabilly wunderkind Mark Neill of Paladins and Deke Dickerson fame. Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond, Ken Bethea and Phillip Peeples have shined up their shingle and are officially back in business.
The CD is assembled from songs that have been written and revamped over the years, nixed from previous albums, honed over hundreds of live shows where many became fan favorites. The bones of some of these tunes have been knocking about for well nigh on a decade. You know how your favorite band has some songs you can only hear live, or at the lead singer's solo show, or on obscure bootlegs culled from here, there and everywhere? And you wonder why in the hell they never put this or that song on a proper album? Well, they finally did, and it's called Drag It Up. "Won't Be Home No More," "Blinding Sheets of Rain," "Bloomington," "Valium Waltz"--all of these songs are already beloved by audiences who have stood by Old 97's in all its various incarnations, but they've never been given the proper studio treatment--until now. It is the uberfan's wet dream.
Old 97's spent half of their career on major label Elektra, whose head honchos would have turned them into the next Matchbox 20 if they'd had their druthers. Through three albums, Too Far to Care (1997), Fight Songs (1999), and Satellite Rides (2001), the band made a progression from insurgent country-punk to ever more polished, "don't-call-us-alt-country" pop. But ultimately the Elektra machine didn't know what to do with the band and lowered the ax on their contract in 2001.
Then, frontman Miller was kept on the Elektra roster as a solo artist and his album The Instigator was released in early 2002. Produced by Jon Brion of Macy Gray and Fiona Apple fame, The Instigator was full-throttle VH1 pop, with none of the countrified trappings that Miller felt so constricting in his duties with Old 97's. He had the chance at the Holy Grail of modern music stardom. Despite critical acclaim, and the fact that he is proverbially "big in Japan," the CD went nowhere. This is one of the great mysteries of pop music--have you seen this guy? One wonders, where are the people who made John Mayer and Jack Johnson stars? And why can we not force them to buy a Rhett Miller CD, when he is a squillion times more talented, and better-looking to boot? As Miller sings on Drag It Up's excellent first single, "The New Kid," "There is no justice / there's just dark stars above." Indeed.
Miller returns to the fold for our first look at the new Old 97's with a cohesion and egalitarianism not seen before. The outfit has always been a democracy, but in the same way that, say, Hungary is a democracy. Sure, there are elections, there is freedom, but everyone knew who was really running the show. Way back when, Rhett wrote all the songs, and Murry was good for a quirky cover or two like "Mama Said" or "Sweet Blue-Eyed Darlin'." If guitarist Ken Bethea absolutely hated a song Rhett proposed, it got shitcanned. That was the gist.
In the beginning, Bethea and drummer Phillip Peeples were guys who could've been earning fat paychecks at their day jobs instead of tinkering with rock n' roll. They did it as a lark, they didn't have "LIFER" tattooed on their foreheads the way that Miller and Hammond so obviously did. Used to be that Bethea never even had a mic on his side of the stage for the occasional "ooh ooh" background vocal. Today, a decade later, he leads his own side project called the Scrap Hotel, and contributes a song he not only wrote but sings on Drag It Up called "Coahuila." It is one of the brightest lights on the CD, a whirling Latin dervish that sounds like what might result if Jonathan Richman wrote a song for the Cramps' Lux Interior to sing fronting Freddy Fender's band.
Meanwhile, Phillip Peeples is one of the most respected and sought-after drummers in the highly competitive Dallas music scene, and plays in the Deathray Davies rootsy alter ego, I Love Math. And Murry Hammond's incredible growth as a songwriter has proven, since the devastating "Valentine" on Fight Songs, that his own standard 2-song-per-CD contribution invariably walks away with the whole show. Can anyone forget "Up the Devil's Pay" from Satellite Rides? 'Nuff said.
Hammond doesn't do covers anymore, and leaves listeners with no doubt as to the balance of power in this four-man unit. Witness "Smokers," hands-down the centerpiece of Drag It Up, and the song from which the CD's title is culled. Hammond had the basis of this song written almost a decade ago, and the full-band treatment it receives here is probably the closest thing you'll ever get to an Old 97's live show experience. The one-two punch of Bethea's guitar assault and Peeples' drumming on the outro is so fierce, it'll make you cry that they ever even considered life in an office. The song is nothing short of incendiary.
And lest we think there is no new ground broken on Drag It Up, contrast this with another standout cut, "Adelaide." One of the only brand-new songs of the bunch, it takes the listener by surprise, coming on the heels of the loping, tried and true sound of "Bloomington" and just before the barn-burner "Friends Forever."
Anyone who has seen the Ranchero Brothers, Miller and Hammond's acoustic side project, or heard "Salome" or "Valentine," knows the incredibly beautiful sounds these boys can make. Their voices blend as if they were born to sit side by side, and their lyrics capture a heartbreak that is bone-deep and so real it hurts. But nowhere, live or recorded, have Old 97's in any of their permutations created quite the sort of beauty that they have with "Adelaide." It may be one of Miller's most perfect lyrical compositions ever, and the Simon & Garfunkel-esque arrangement is never cloying in its delicacy. Heaven.
In the end, Drag It Up is the sound of a band that has matured enough to answer only to itself. It is the sound of release. Old 97's have come to the point in their career where they've decided to simply do what they do best. And thank heaven for that.
