![]() Immediately following the bluesy "No One" comes "Sad Songs (Intermission)", a full-blown outlaw country jaunt that manages to work in the phrase " Do you want some cheese with all that whine?" The guitar solos that crop up throughout the album add a new dimension to the group's sound, and serve the songs, rather than just being showoff-y.Īs great as the first half of Knife Man is, its second is even better. Musically, the band stretches their legs more than they ever have before, and there's not an experiment that doesn't work. Your body felt just like a T-shirt"), but its haunting melody is so beautiful it's impossible to turn off. You pissed blood, and then they chained you up when you turned blue. So graphic, in fact, that at times it is hard to listen to (" They cut out your tongue so you would not scream when you came to. "Back Pack" is an extremely graphic account of coming home to find a murdered lover. "American Tune" is a meditation on white, heterosexual male privilege, and while somewhat light in tone, it comes off more thoughtful and poignant than anything a band like RVIVR has ever managed to muster up on the subject. Indeed, all of the songs on Knife Man in this style ("Distance" and "Hate, Rain on Me" spring to mind), feel more confident and fully fleshed out than anything on Can't Maintain.Įven with this added instrumentation, Sean Bonnette's lyrics are what have always endeared me, and I imagine the majority of the group's fans to the band, and Knife Man contains some of the most accomplished lyrics of their career thus far. ![]() It retains the distorted electric guitars first introduced on Can't Maintain, but it feels like the band have a better handle on that kind of instrumentation now, and are writing songs with it in mind, rather than simply adding it to folk songs where it might not belong. Its followup, 2009's Can't Maintain, while a fine record in its own right, didn't quite have the same emotional resonance for me as People, so I went into their latest offering, Knife Man, with modest expectations, and it blew every single one of them away.Īfter a short and somber introduction in "The Michael Jordan of Drunk Driving", Knife Man kicks into high gear with "The Gift of the Magi 2: Return of the Magi 2". Andrew Jackson Jihad's 2007 full-length, People Who Can Eat People are the Luckiest People In the World, means a lot to me, and along with Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose, stands as one of the pinnacles of the folk-punk genre.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |