OKRA ALL-STARS
s/t
Innerstate
Records
Veterans
of the sadly defunct Okra label team up here and
prove themselves worthy of the 'alternative country
rock supergroup' tag afforded them by Innerstate's
promotional literature. Yo La Tengo's Dave Schramm
provides a fool-proof guitaristic base for Ricky
Barnes (The Hoot Owls), Hank McCoy (Dead Ringers) and
Jeb Loy Nichols, of Fellow Travellers and Good Will
Hunting soundtrack fame, to build on. Their take on
country is not a million miles from a Burrito-style
sound. All four members turn in amazing vocal
contributions, both lead and backing, but it is most
notably Nichol's hillbilly twang that defines that
Okra Country sound, epitomised by The Game of
Love and Don't Laugh. The CD
contains 6 originals and a wide range of covers',
Innerstate tell us, but the sleeve notes give no
credits for authorship, which is a shame from the
viewpoint of divining which of the songs sitting
perfectly alongside a definitive Purple Rainand
numbers by George Jones and Merle Haggard, are their
own. One hopes that the album's wry opener is home
grown, entitled 'Big Mistake', which for
country lovers and Innerstate alike, this record
certainly isn't.
A.G.
NADINE
Downtown
Saturday
GLITTERHOUSE,
GRCD 443
The muse of
naming bands is a fickle guest, and when he does call
by his visits are seldom more than fleeting. If he
ever had the courtesy to stay for dinner, or even a
weekend, we might have been spared the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers, It Bites, Alice in Chains and countless
other similarly under-inspired monikers. It seems He
made no exception in the case of Nadine, conjuring up
no images relevant to three blokes from St. Louis,
Missouri. Singer-songwriter Adam Reichmann was keen
to defend it recently on satellite station CMR,
proffering that the name, has a little sex-appeal...a
kind of Down Home feel to it,' but more or less
conceded it's blandness in his suggestion that it
could, 'accommodateany of the changes that the band
could have.' I rest my case.
Petty gripes
aside, how does 'Downtown, Saturday', the band's
second album, but only their first real 'studio'
outing, shape up? From the onset, in the form of
opener, 'Closer', with it's clear echoes of
Neil Young's 'out on the Weekend', this is obviously
a case of a group whose influences are worn proudly
on their sleeves. A shame then that they don't appear
to have a few more. The Young theme is exploited on
almost all ten of the album's cuts, from the 'Winterlong/Like
a Hurricane', Crazy Horse inflected, 'Out on
a Limb', and the 'Byrds'-esque chorus of
'Shelter', to 'So That I Don't Miss You',
which falls slightly short of 'Tell Me Why'.
In fact, the only real exception is 'Twilight',
offering a kind of Tracy Chapman-meets-the-Eagles
feel in it's depiction of latter-day lethargy and
'the bad vibes of the want-ad pages'. 'We all love
the Eagles', as Reichmann himself put it.But, hey! a
lot of bands are guilty of the same kind of sound and
there are a lot worse things you can do than come on
a bit like the Original Grungester! You would,
however, expect some ground to be regained lyrically,
but sadly Reichmann tends to veer toward the obvious,
if not twee, slightly too often. Cliches flow like
water down a drain, with lines like, 'The cheaters
prosper / The losers win' (Out on a Limb), 'If you
need shelter / Don't you know that you're safe in
these arms', (Shelter), and most blatantly ,
'Whenever you are around / I just feel better', (Whenever
You are Around).All this said, there
are occasions when it all falls into place and aural
satisfaction can be gleaned from the record. 'Closer'
is a grower that will sneak up on you,
succeeding all the way from it's groovy, pared down
intro to it's lilting conclusion, simplicity being
the key. 'Out on a Limb' does 'rock', after
a fashion, and occasionally approaches the force and
energy of those it strives to emulate. But it is 'All
the Lines are Down' which stands apart from the
other songs, not alone in it's 'After the Gold
Rush' mood, but somehow finding an extra measure
of depth and originality within it's lonesome bars,
and offering what one would hope to be a taster of a
more mature Nadine, a little further down the line.
'I got a
thick skin on me, I can take it', asserts a
philosophical Reichmann, and well may he need one in
coming times. It's not that this is a bad album, it
just offers little of anything that's new, leaving
you with the impression that, creatively, his journey
to 'Downtown, Saturday' has been little short of a
ride straight down Easy Street.
A.G.