Even Better Than "Above Market Value" ...
Paul Hickey | Fairfax, VA USA | 12/27/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Rench, the driving force behind the country/hip-hop band Battlestar America a few years ago, has outdone himself with "Life In Mean Season" this time around.
Indeed, perhaps the only regrettable thing about this album is that it may be too creative and original for many people to hear or for radio stations to play anywhere. That is too bad because, as surprising as it may seem, Rench really does make the country music format mesh well with the hip-hop genre of mixing different kinds of beats, lyrics, melodies, and rhythms into something altogether new and even unique. Simply put, these are tunes that resist easy typecasting into any one category.
Ably backed by bandmates Michi "Ten Fingers" Wiancko and Jason Cade on fiddle, Nick "The Reverend" Dedring, Bob Hoffner, and Billy Villano on pedal steel guitar, Big Dan Jeselsohn and Roy Shimmyo on bass, and DJ Simple Simon, The Scratch Cowboy, on turntables, Rench manages to cover a lot of ground on this record. As a bonus, Linda May Wacker, Veronica Dougherty, Lil' Jess Williams, and Jessica Basta add a welcome feminine touch here and there throughout the CD. Basta's cover of the old Bobbie Gentry classic "Fancy" is particularly impressive.
A couple of numbers like "All You Need To Know" and "Just Crazy" are fun, honky-tonk songs, but other tracks, such as "At Risk" and "Despite You," aim for (and effortlessly achieve) the more serious goal of describing life and love and loss amid the ruined landscape of George W. Bush's America at the bleak dawn of the early 21st century. Although "Life In Mean Season" is by no means a work of topical songs, it does borrow generously from the folk idiom in terms of telling stories about people in the context of their times.
For example, it is impossible to listen to "Home By December" and not think of the war in Iraq. With a mournful, dirgelike arrangement and violin weaving through verses about a doomed soldier and his widow, it is almost a sort of slow funeral march from the front lines, as Rench sings:
"I was homesick and scared,
but I was noble and brave,
and every December
she brings flowers to my grave."
Then there's the retro-ballad "Elmira," which gives the cliched, hard-luck prison song a new twist in its tale of two brothers who end up on different sides of the War on Drugs while their hometown crumbles around them. The words carry a certain black humor but they hold a cautionary warning as well. You can tell by how each of the following lines serves a purpose:
"In the wintertime feds came and made their case.
But I knew that I'd be dead if I witnessed for the state.
The sentence was mandatory, the judge apologized,
when they sent me back where my daddy died."
Everywhere on this dark album you sense the ravages of desperation, hopelessness, and economic and spiritual recessions. And yet Rench offers a warped form of faith, too. By the final tracks on "Life In Mean Season" he comes as close as anyone to balancing the cultural and political mood of the country in spare prose that almost stands as a plea for greater tolerance and understanding from all of us, for each other. One verse from the penultimate song goes:
"We will find a way to love our neighbor,
across the street and across the Equator.
We will never stop dreaming as long as we're alive.
Despite you, we'll find a way to survive."
Corporate scandals, stolen elections, and partisanship aside, "Life In Mean Season" reminds us that we are all in this thing together. The last track, "Don't Let Your Light Stop Shining," stresses that vital point. And if there are several weak tunes like "Dirty Bomb" along the way, well, one cannot be too disappointed when most of the 20 songs on this record are so darn good."
Track Listings (20) - Disc #1