Preceding side story: I kinda wish I had gone to UT for several reasons. One reason is that at UTD, our mascot is a flaming sperm, which is far less intimidating than even a large cow with big horns. Another reason is that the music scene in Richardson, TX (the community chock full of suburban neighborhoods and fast food joints that also happens to be home to my alma mater) left quite a bit to be desired. I'll begin making up for lost time in September when I go to Austin City Limits '08, an event I only hope lives up to my incredibly unrealistic expectations and dreams.South Austin Jug Band used to be a perennial act in Austin (imagine that). According to my brother, they put on great shows with regularity. They had a guitarist/singer, kick-ass mandoliner and fiddler, an acoustic bassist/singer, and a heavily dreadlocked guitar virtuoso. As a casual late-comer fan, I really enjoyed SAJB's stylings, which sits on the fence between bluegrass and folk, as reflected in their first two albums, South Austin Jug Band and Dark and Weary World. The former boasts an unforgettable "Little Wing" cover, and the latter is played with high regularity on my (and I suspect others') iPod.
So imagine my enthusiasm when I ran across Strange Invitation one day at CD Source. A final side story: I finally got to see these guys at Threadgill's in Austin last fall. It was really chill; my fellow concert-goers were somewhat disenchanted by their lack of edge. Apparently they've lost a couple of their original crew in the last year or two. I hoped mightily as I struggled to un-shrink-wrap my purchase that Strange Invitation did not share the same fate.
It does, sadly.
I think there's some great music on this album, depending on what you like; it just is so different from what I'm used to. The first two tracks, "Come to Me" and "Falls So Fast" are really decent tracks, but not spectacular. But most of the songs are all the same: very tame tracks that put you right to sleep.
Even the big instrumental pieces (which occur in both SAJB's prior albums with excellent results), "Trek of Beandip Perkins" and "Reprise" don't get the blood going like good ol' straw-chomping, overall-wearing bluegrass is supposed to. It's like bluegrass on heavy-duty muscle relaxers.
If you haven't heard of South Austin Jug Band, consider this less a chastising of Strange Invitation and more a glorification of their earlier stuff. Plus, this happened to be in my work computer during a particularly crappy day at the office, so I have the whole negative association thing going on. (Had to stay until 9:30pm on a Friday, for those of you who are curious.) Ah well.
Grade: C
No comments:
Post a Comment