It’s just over three weeks since the World Health Organisation declared that COVID is no longer an emergency and a couple of years since it peaked, but the impact of the virus is still being felt, particularly in the fields of music and leisure. This Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors album was written on either side of the pandemic and pulled together in a way that couldn’t have happened during the emergency. Drew and his band spent eight days in a studio in Asheville NC, playing the songs live and searching for the perfect take. It’s a process with an element of risk but it works if you have good songs and good players; ‘Strangers No More’ has both of those in abundance. Lyrically, the album’s largely positive, emphasising the way forward rather than looking back, and reflecting Drew’s new outlook and more relaxed attitude to performance.
Drew Holcomb’s blessed with a versatile voice, equally at home on the tub-thumpers like ‘Dance with Everybody’ which hints at Springsteen, The Waterboys and Paul Simon’s African experiments, and the more reflective triple time ‘Gratitude’ with its soaring chorus and vocal that resembles Ian Matthews in the mid/late seventies. In fact, the seventies influence looms large throughout the album, sometimes where you least expect it. The album also showcases Drew’s vocal range and the band’s superb use of dynamics, shifting effortlessly from gentle acoustic arrangements to full-on widescreen E Street band arrangements; there’s plenty of variety, all held together by tight arrangements and the quality of Drew Holcomb’s voice.
And what about some of those other seventies references? ‘That’s On You, That’s On Me’ is a wake-up call song that opens with a nod to ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ and moves on through rock guitar riffs with a country rock feel as the song progresses. ‘Possibility’ and ‘On a Roll’ both have an E Street Band feel while the latter also has a soundscape that seems to reference The Blue Nile. The big surprise is ‘Strange Feeling’, which opens with a ‘Darlington County’ style riff before, morphing into an early seventies Steely Dan sound complete with a guitar solo that could be the legendary Jeff Baxter.
Drew Holcomb and the neighbours succeed in pulling together a variety of styles and influences to create an album feels at the same time familiar and wholly original where everything is there to serve the song. This album will make you think, make you smile and make you want to dance like no-one’s watching – you can’t ask for more than that.
‘Strangers No More’ is released in the UK on Friday June 9th on Magnolia Music.
Here’s the video for ‘Dance with Everybody’:
“Scoundrels, Dreamers and Second Sons” is the debut album from The Remittance Men, a bunch of very gifted musicians from Boston, Massachusetts playing the songs of singer songwriter Tom Robertson (plus a couple of well-chosen covers). The band formed about two years ago as the pandemic broke and put together this collection of songs over that period. It’s difficult to pin down a specific genre; the song arrangements combine elements of the traditional string band with fiddle, mandolin, upright bass and acoustic guitar, keyboards, pedal steel and electric guitars from the country tradition, trumpets evoking Central America and even a horn section on “Lila Page 8”. It’s a wide palette and The Remittance Men fully explore its texture and colours. The varied elements are pulled together by the quality of Tom’s songs and his gravelly vocal delivery that never seems forced.
The songs are full of little vignettes; short descriptions of people and places fitting together to form the narrative framework of songs such “Sweet Thunder” following the route back home across America and “Lonely and Silent”, tracing the broken lives of people left behind as small businesses in rural America fell to the power of the multinationals; it’s not pretty, but it’s authentic. There are songs that feel deeply personal, without being particularly explicit, including the poignant opener, “1973 (Life on the High Seas)” and the historical “A Room in Birmingham England, 1919”.
The two songs that particularly grabbed my attention are probably the furthest from the traditional Americana canon, “Hacienda Santa Rosa” and “Lila Page 8”. “Hacienda…” uses Mexican rhythms and the inevitable trumpet to create a setting that works for the song’s lyrics. Moving in a completely different direction, “Lila Page 8” starts with a saxophone and trumpet intro and builds steadily to a full-on E Street Band/Asbury Jukes rock and soul arrangement with guitar solos flashing across the strident horns and big backing vocals. It’s a huge arrangement, and the heartfelt delivery suggests that this is another deeply personal song. Of the two covers, Tim Gearan’s delicate love song in triple time, “Nobody” follows “Lila…” contrasting with the massive arrangement and creates a low-key finish to the album. And the other cover is Tom Petty’s “Down South”, which fits in perfectly with pan-American feel of the album.
This is a fascinating debut from a writer with a gift for subtly combining a kaleidoscope of lyrical impressions against a backdrop of understated instrumental performances to create songs that just won’t quit.
“Scoundrels, Dreamers and Second Sons” is released on Friday March 25th on Blonde on the Tracks Records.
Here’s the video of “A Room in Birmingham England, 1919”:
