Evergreen Trio - Lift Up Your Voice
(Devotional)
This is a collection of voice and acoustic guitar songs, structured about
half-way betwen traditional indie rock and country (think Karate meets
Johnny Cash), that were recorded live in a single day on "a back porch."
The defining quality of this album is its unabashed mimicry of folk music
field recordings from a time other than our own, with gritty, heavy
microphone and tape distortion, lots of wind noise, and a pinched, grossly
attenuated frequency response--all artifacts that the original folk field
recordists desperately struggled with the technology of their time to
eliminate. It's an interesting attempt to place these songs in an
envelope that's been clearly stamped with a far off place and date, but,
in my opinion the self conscious and unnecessarily bad sound quality hurts
rather than helps here.
I don't think that Joe Reina (The Evergreen Trio)
is probably capable of the sincerity, humor, or intelligence that makes
other folk music poseurs such as Will Oldham or Bill Callahan so enjoyable
to listen to, but even if he is, you could never tell--the lyrics are
rendered indecipherable by the noise, and the vocal and guitar sounds seem
distant, vague, and dull. Music this simple needs some kind of immediacy
or instantly resonant feeling in order to be most engaging, and these
things are just not present here.
It's not that the music is bad; it just isn't vital. It doesn't provide
itself with a reason to have ever been committed to CD and made available
for purchase by the general public. It sounds just like what it is--an
averagely talented guy screwing around with a tape recorder and a few
songs he wrote. If that sounds good to you, buy this CD.
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