Deadstring. Dead string? What?!
Hailing from Detroit, a city famous for three things only; murders, cars and Axel Foley, you'd expect The Deadstring Brothers to be rappers, industrial metal-heads, hard-rockers or drug dealers. You'd be wrong...well about the first three anyway - how a struggling band supplements its meagre income is really none of my business. The Deadstring Brothers are good ole' boys (although they do count one female as a band member - so maybe their name embodies what the Americans perceive to be irony) and they play good-time country and western blues.
Some readers of the above will already have hit the 'Back' button I'm sure (the Room Thirteen motto is 'Where Music Rocks' after all) and many will argue that just like Marmite, you either love country music or hate it. I would disagree. My evidence? Johnny Cash and Billy Ray Cyrus.
Now before you get the wrong impression, I am NOT attempting to argue that Cyrus is anything other than a beefy, mindless fuck-head whose only perceivable talent remains the ability to grow a mullet. I hope that will restore what little credibility I have. Cyrus did, however, produce a smash-hit single ('Achy Breaky Heart' in case anyone has forgotten, though really...how could you? Oh, and as an aside, if anyone who is reading this review actually bought a copy of that wretched, petrifying and damnable excuse for a song...get outta here RIGHT NOW), and you don't get a record to the highest echelons of the singles charts unless people buy the bloody thing.
So I reckon that most people out there will occasionally drink from the murky well of country music - perhaps as relief from the customary consumption of Minogue, Madonna and monkeys from the Artic. Oh - and why did I mention Cash? Look how popular he is today; re-issues, compilations, movies etc, etc, etc. Most people I know in this world love Johnny Cash, - but they don't listen to any other country artists. Why? Because Cash was probably the greatest country artist in the history of music (Willie Nelson finishes a close second) and talent like his crosses all the boundaries, boroughs and borders of musical classification and taste. The man was and remains an icon...and his hair style was better than Cyrus's too.
So...back to the plot. The Deadstring Brothers's second album 'Starving Winter Report' was released last year. So why am I reviewing it now, you might ask? I have absolutely no idea - I just review what gets shoved through my letterbox by my insolent postman each week. Maybe Detroit's crime problem has now reached such dizzying levels of madness that using a mailbox is now a capital crime and punishable by twenty-four hour exposure to Johnny Knoxville movies. Or maybe it was dispatched by stagecoach - you decide...
The brisk, happy-go-lucky 'Sacred Heart' kicks things off and immediately sets The Deadstring Brothers's musical make-up for the album entire - basic, melodic guitar strums, undulating bass lines, clipped, precise drumming - all augmented by simple piano and organ arrangements and the occasional rattle of a tambourine. Lyrically, it's pretty standard country stuff: desolation, compunction, tragic romance - all passionately put across by vocalists Kurt Marschke and Masha Marjieh. Although comparisons to 'Exile on Main Street'-era Stones have been made, The Deadstring Brothers don't have the licks, the attitude or the balls that the Stones once did - plus the Stones never played country - they played rock 'n' fucking roll.
Wailing violins and a polished steel guitar expand the band's sound to a more traditional country style on 'Moonlight Only Knows'; and with 'Get Up Jake' (although it suffers from a rather flat production), it becomes abundantly clear that it's with this upbeat, easy-going material that The Deadstring Brothers are most comfortable - and most engaging.
There are a couple of clangers on this disk though. The detour into a glutinous soft-rock quagmire with the languid 'Lights Go Out' and 'Blindfolded' is particularly disagreeable and both tracks wouldn't be out of place on a Soul Asylum or Crash Test Dummies album (needless to say - that is a bad thing). The former also suffers badly from its lyrical desolation. The line "Ain't no truth until we're dead" made me contemplate hunting down Marschke and emulating Jack Nicholson in 'A Few Good Men' by screaming "You can't handle the truth" in his face. I decided against it for rather obvious financial reasons.
On a more technical level, The Deadstring Brothers is a slick and professional outfit. On 'Toe the Line', Marschke's strong yet vulnerable vocal is beautifully harmonised by Marjieh and throughout the album, the supporting players gel into a tight unit, all of them demonstrating excellent musicianship.
The closer 'Lonely Days' begins with a militaristic drum intro and is, again, buoyed by the employment of a steel guitar. It's a good enough finale but one that makes one reappraise the whole record - and looking back, I think I've gotta concede that it's pretty patchy. There's decent material on this record to be sure, but nothing that stands out in the memory half an hour after you've switched it off.
That's not to say that The Deadstring Brothers is a band you should ignore completely. I managed to catch them at Borderline in London a couple of months back, and they played a great set. They sounded energised; the songs (some of which appear on this album) were vibrant, powerful and the crowd loved every minute of it. If a little of that magic could have been sprinkled into these recordings and the soft-rock material was unceremoniously ejected, you'd be left with a terrific record. 'Starving Winter Report' ain't original - but then it ain't supposed to be. When they play to their strengths, The Deadstring Brothers is a band capable of making an enjoyable racket.
Not one of them has a mullet either, a fact which has got them an extra mark straight of the bat...