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Average: 4.5 (14 ratings)
- Date Released: October 19, 2004
- Genre: Country/Folk
- Style: Americana, Bluegrass
- Label: Eleven Thirty Records / Yep Roc / Redeye
Good-timing music with trailer-park beatnik verse in the classic American tall tale and storytelling tradition.
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We Say...
Nearly a dozen albums (including side projects) into a career still less than a decade old, the Gourds remain one of a kind, and remarkably consistent. Their good-timing, mostly acoustic music, in which harmonicas cozy up to accordions and brittle mandolins emulate banjos, is tonally and texturally backwoods rural without being escapist or nostalgic, and it's always danceable. The vocal harmonies of Jimmy Smith and Kevin Russell are like burnished leather that retains just enough roughness. Then there's their trailer-park beatnik verse, which revels in ribaldry, fanciful wordplay and surreal colloquialisms; the songs are in the classic American tall tale and storytelling tradition, as re-imagined by free-associating postmodernists on a weed-and-cheap-wine bender. "Lower 48" could be a travelogue by guys who've logged hundreds of thousands of miles in the van or it could be an uneasy commentary on this election season — or both ("Florida shakes in the mystery of numbers/ Pan handlers cookin' them road kill wings/ Texas drinks from 1100 springs/ Cottonmouth and the copperhead are king"). Even when antecedents seem apparent — Al Green on "Escalade," Waylon Jennings on the title song — they sound like nobody but the Gourds. And that's a mighty fine way to sound.
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They Say...
Scorch-porch? Beergrass? Hick-hop? All three tags have attempted, and ultimately failed, to successfully relate to the masses the eclectic bits of meat and bone that make up Austin, TX, the Gourds. The bandmembers themselves describe their Twilight Zone, sepia-tone, gravy-drenched fools-gold nuggets as "music for the unwashed and well-read," and that sentiment couldn't be more apt in illustrating the dizzying redneck poetry that runs rampant on their sixth full-length release, The Blood of the Ram. "Oklahoma has a dirty red mane/a Native American slot machine" is just one of the delicious images from co-founder Kevin Russell's ode to the "Lower 48." A spirited look at the nation through the windshield of a rusty tour bus, it's a fitting introduction to a collection of songs that are among the loosest and most road-trip-worthy of the quintet's decade-long career. The Gourds have always subscribed to the warts-and-all energy of recording live in the studio, and while Blood of the Ram retains all of the drunken barn jam whoops and missed cues of previous efforts, the troops are so well seasoned that even at their sloppiest -- Jimmy Smith's magnificently weird closer, "Turd in My Pocket" -- they manage to outperform most of their contemporaries in sheer enthusiasm alone. Theirs is a singular vision of local color ("Arapaho"), good old boys and girls gettin' caught and gettin' spanked ("Spanky"), and late-night treats both savory and illegal ("Cracklins"). Whether they're copping an obscure mid-song riff from Led Zeppelin's "Over the Hills and Far Away" or implementing bowed saw, Hammond organ, or a whimsically out of place penny whistle into the stew, the Gourds are in command and could care less how you think it sounds. In fact, it's a testament to their rustic charm, big vocabularies, and smoke-black Southwest humor that when Smith says, "You can't sh*t me/I already got a turd in my pocket," the listener laughs like an adoring younger sibling, despite having just been hoodwinked, again.
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You Say...
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| 01. |  |
Lower 48 |
4:31 |  |
| 02. | |
TTT Gas |
3:06 | |
| 03. | |
Escalade |
4:57 | |
| 04. | |
Illegal Oyster |
3:24 | |
| 05. | |
Arapaho |
3:33 | |
| 06. | |
Wired Ole Gal |
2:17 | |
| 07. | |
On Time |
2:58 | |
| 08. | |
Do 4 U |
3:54 | |
| 09. | |
Let Him In |
3:52 | |
| 10. | |
Cracklins |
4:25 | |
| 11. | |
Spanky |
2:58 | |
| 12. | |
Blood of the Ram |
4:40 | |
| 13. | |
Turd in My Pocket |
3:42 | |
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Credits
- Mark Hallman - Mixing // Jack Smith - Vocals // Jack Smith - Guest Appearance // The Gourds - Engineer // The Gourds - Engineer // Mike Nicolai - Vocals (Background) // Mike Nicolai - Guest Appearance // Jeff Johnston - Saw // Jeff Johnston - Guest Appearance // Jim Wilson - Mastering
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