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Deer Tick - War Elephant
- This is the record you always hoped your friend in high school would make. These are the tunes you’d trek to late night shows in inconvenient locations just to hear. And after the show, you’d tell your friend he was a talented songwriter and good things would come one day, though of course you had your doubts. This is the record that proves you wrong.
“War Elephant” is the debut release from Deer Tick, the moniker for singer/songwriter, John McCauley. It’s not a cheerful record, but it’s an accomplished one. McCauley’s singing is full of howling and yelping and that raw sound you get in your voice when you’ve spent an entire night explaining yourself until your vocal chords start to shut. The music is simple and sparse. With the exception of the closing track, you won’t find anything more than a guitar and some drums in these songs. And the lyrics, they’re not pretty, but they are poignant.
The album opens with the lines, “I am the boy your mother wanted you to meet. But I am broken and torn, with halo’s at my feet.” The following track, “Art Isn’t Real,” is arguably the most immediate song on the record. Yet even this song is laden with heavy lines. “I can’t make up for everything I waste,” McCauley confesses. And on songs like “Baltimore Blues No. 1” and “These Old Shoes,” Deer Tick seems to perfect the hobo blues formula, and prove that even sadness, done right, can get your feet moving.
Deer Tick perches themselves somewhere between classic folk rockers like Neil Young and some more current moody musicians like the National, though in both cases, Deer Tick’s songs are more Lo-Fi, and that much more affecting. It may take one or two more releases of this caliber to catapult the band to some fame, but this is a band that certainly deserves recognition.
Reviewer: Seth Fiegerman
new
Reviewer's Rating: 7.5
Reader's Rating: 9.00
Reader's Votes: 1
Added: 15-Jul-2009
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