Reviews
Artist: Case Hardin
Album: Every Dirty Mirror
Label: Clubhouse
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.casehardin.com
Starting with an acapella track about adultery and substance abuse, that is just over a minute long and sounds like it played back through an old tape answering machine is not the most conventional way to open an album. It does, however, serve notice that 'Every Dirty Mirror' is not a standard collection of country rock by number songs.
That no two tracks are alike, that each one has a different feel is one of the main reasons that make this an exceptional album. 'Lullaby (… of sorts)' with its big chorus with lead guitar, piano and mandolin hooks is the most straightforward country rocker on the album yet has it's origin four years ago as the final track on the live album 'I've been carrying these old stories' that lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Pete Gow recorded solo. The current line up of Gow, Andy Batsow (drums), Adam Kotz (banjo, mandolin), Tim Emery (bass) and Jim Maving (guitars) is the first stable line up since the band's forming twelve years ago and 'Every Dirty Mirror' is the first album since 2007's 'Some Tunes for Charlie Spencer'.
'Are those really the miles?' showcases the control of tone that Maving has over his guitar, 'A day at the races', a cautionary tale of how (or rather where) a night out can end features Kotz's banjo picking, 'First steps out of the city' has a Dylanesque feel to it, 'Old Wooden Pews' has a distinct Stones vibe and the melancholic, piano led 'Tiano Sands' closes the second side of the album.
Second side? Yes, like its predecessor, 'Every Dirty Mirror' was constructed as a tradition album with the first side, broadly speaking, being the rockier of the two. Equally important as the construction of this album is the song writing of Gow and the opening track of the second side 'Champeen' is the greatest triumph on this album. A story song, it tells of the afore mentioned Champeen who has been at the top of his game for "nigh on nine years" and has to come to terms with both his age, that he need to travel overseas to fight and that the Marquis of Queensbury rules, with its use of gloves and shorter rounds, are replacing London Prize Ring Rules. Gow captures the brutality of boxing; "I'd been bitten, butted and beaten around until I couldn't see too well" and "He was crawling around / he was looking for his corner / he was pissing blood for a week" as well as the ancient saying that time and tide wait for no man. "I'll go twenty-seven rounds with any man here" starts as a statement of fact and ends as a call of defiance that, much as you want to, you really cannot bring yourself to belive.
With little more than three months of 2011 to go I really cannot imagine anything coming close to topping this this year's 'best of' polls: in any genre.
John 'The Jacket' Hawes