Al Scorch
\nCircle Round the Signs
\nBloodshot Records, 2016<\/p>\n
At this point, I don\u2019t remember how long Bloodshot has been around blessing us with Alt-Country of every possible variety that you can imagine.\u00a0 I do remember eating vegan dogs at the Bloodshot BBQs in New York during CMJ at the now defunct Brownies in the East Village to see many early legends, including Ryan Adams, with a rolled up farmer\u2019s shirt and acoustic guitar, before his star shot into the stratosphere, and on South Congress in Austin during SXSW.\u00a0 Those BBQs were legendary and I hope I am able to attend another in the future.<\/p>\n
Al Scorch is new to me, and since I have a little time to kill and Bloodshot keeps sending me emails, I figured Scorch and Bloodshot deserved a review, or what passes for one from me in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cInsomnia\u201d like its real-life counterpart, begins slowly, hoping for some peace, even when the sun comes up, speeding to find resolution at a frenetic pace, racing through the night to find medication that helps where none can be found, and finally exhausting itself days later.\u00a0 In the midst of it all, a fiddle, drum, and acoustic guitar help us get there.\u00a0 The tune is almost a visceral description for those that suffer from such a terrible malady.<\/p>\n
\u201cCity Lullaby\u201d while contradictory, brings peace, and the lyrics leave me with a vision of a cityscape of rushing ballets, at once tumultuous, chaotic, and melodic as it begins, racing, reaching a peaceful plateau to join hands in a waltz, and rising again to rest at the end of a day.\u00a0 \u201cSlipknot\u201d isn\u2019t so peaceful, but it is danceable, in spite of the morbid, celebratory, and vengeful job of the hangman who works for a state that doesn\u2019t care.\u00a0 It\u2019s a dance to the death.\u00a0 I love the melody, but I don\u2019t like the visions.<\/p>\n
Scorch has his heart and soul on Alt-Country, even in 2016 with lamentable inequality that has been rarely explored in Country, at least in my memory. In those rare instances that it has by Haggard, Parton, and Lynn, it is embraced and welcomed here, too. \u201cPoverty Draft\u201d is almost an acoustic symphony with lyrics ripping your soul out but not quite.\u00a0 While he describes inequality in this country adequately, he doesn\u2019t differentiate amongst the inequality of white patriarchy or institutional racism.\u00a0 That would be a tune I would love to see him write and record. Melodically, it\u2019s beautiful, however.<\/p>\n
This may be the first label offering from Scorch and it\u2019s a very listenable one.\u00a0 Find it at Bloodshot.com or your local independent retailer.\u00a0 Let\u2019s stay out of the corporate behemoths unless you live nowhere near a record store.\u00a0 Since that\u2019s the case for me, I suspect others may be living in equivalent deserts as well.<\/p>\n
RadioMike
\n8 May 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al Scorch Circle Round the Signs Bloodshot Records, 2016 At this point, I don\u2019t remember how long Bloodshot has been around blessing us with Alt-Country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,57,40,25],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-albums","tag-album-review","tag-alt-country","tag-indie","tag-music-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiocasbah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}