It's a rare pleasure in this day and age for me to listen to a brand new album for the first time on vinyl. That's not to say that new albums aren't being pressed anymore, far from it. In fact the record part of the record industry seems to be thriving despite (or perhaps as a reaction to) the trend towards digital. The thing is that I'm not the most patient of men, and more often than not I've obtained a new album digitally (either as a download or a CD) long before the black circle can make its way to my local record shop.
I was pleasantly surprised then, when I came home from work the other day to find a suspiciously record shaped package had been left by our ninja postman (he's very good at leaving packages without leaving a trace). It turns out that the good people at Side One Dummy had shipped the international orders of Elsie early so that the record would be there for release. So I grabbed my favourite headphones, and fired up the turntable to listen.
The Horrible Crowes are kind of a side project for Brian Fallon, frontman with one of my favourite bands of recent years The Gaslight Anthem. To form The Horrible Crowes he has teamed up with Ian Perkins, who doubles as Brian's guitar tech when Gaslight tour. In theory The Horrible Crowes will be a home for all the songs Brian writes that aren't right for The Gaslight Anthem, freeing him up to write more of the kind of punk-soul that has made them famous.
The problem ends up being that Brian Fallon can't not sound like Brian Fallon, and he can't write songs any differently to the way that he writes them. Therefore vocally, and musically this is not a big conceptual step from his day job. He sings the songs a little softer, and plays them a little slower, but the heart is the same.
The difference comes down to the production. There's instruments here that would never show their face on a Gaslight Anthem album, things like Hammond style organs, and horn sections. But more importantly there's more space. The songs don't fill in all the way to the edge, which gives the listener more room to inhabit the song with Brian and Ian.
I think it's going to be tough going for this album. Outside of Gaslight Anthem fans it's going to have to work hard to find an audience, and within those same fans it's going to struggle to live up to the alchemy that happens when those four guys write music together. I like the album, and I like the songs, but it's not the revelation I was hoping it to be.
On a side note, the bonus track that arrived with the download (I love vinyl, but I love it more when they give me a copy I can listen to on my iPod as well) is brilliant. An earnest, broken, cover of Concrete Blonde's 1990 classic Joey. I was always a big fan of the original, and this cover is interesting enough to make me love it all over again. I'd say it was worth getting the album just for this track, but that's not really fair to the rest of the album, which is perfectly adequate, but it pales when compared to what I know Brian is capable of.
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