If you listen to a fair amount of music, you find the small bands that you love and no one else has heard of. You are passionate about them and tell everyone about this cool band that they don't know, you have to hear them. The other side of this is you don't want them to change, they are York and you love them exactly the way they are.I was shown Lucero three albums ago. Their sound was this great amalgamation of southern rock, with Springsteen and Replacements influences thrown in. They have a gravel voiced singer who isn't afraid of a slow song. When I saw them in a bar in Bellingham I felt they had replaced The Hold Steady as the best bar band in the country.
I was really looking forward to the new album. Maybe a little too much. It came out Tuesday, I used my smart phone at work and streamed it through my Rdio account.
Initially, I hated it. Somebody's had taken my cool edgy band, took all the edge off of it and made a generic new country album. I didn't even want to go see them live at the end of the month.
I sent an email to the guy who showed them to me, and he told me I should calm down and give it another listen. I did and I was glad.
The songs are still there, it's the production of the album that is the problem. They took the the driving guitars and moved them to the back. They brought the horns forward (does a band with this much ink need full on horns?) along with the keyboards. They took the singer's voice and smoothed it out as much as they could. This was a band that had an edge and they sanded it off.
I might still buy the album. This is a band that I believe in and I want them to continue. I'm probably going to the Neumos show next Sunday. The things they changed in production will be back when they play live. There won't be any horns and they will still be a bar band in a bar.
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