| swearing at motorists |
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review taken from sponic
John Wenzel
As a record reviewer, I’m always struggling to come up with clever adjectives to describe the steady stream of music that pours through my friggin' head. Swearing at Motorists consistently leaves me leafing through the thesaurus.
There’s no other phrase for singer/guitarist Dave Doughman’s voice than heart-wrenching. And I don’t mean that in a dripping-with-sadness way (although you could make a case for that). It’s more in the fact that he channels, or does a damn good job imitating, the same kind of intensely soulful/bleak-yet-poppy inflection that Neil Young, Will Oldham, and Jeff Mangum seem to emit spontaneously. Number Seven Uptown is this Dayton, Ohio group’s second full-length for Secretly Canadian, and it picks up where the excellent More Songs for the Mellow Struggle left off. Drummer Don Thrasher (Johnny Smoke, GBV) plays Scott Plouf to Doughman’s Rebecca Gates in his tight, minimalist way. The arrangements on this disc are markedly more ambitious than on past efforts. Lots of starting and stopping, intros and codas, etc. And somehow, it still manages to clock in under a half an hour.
The lyrics ooze pain and misunderstanding, but in a thankfully mellow fashion. Doughman may be as disaffected as every other songwriter, but he tempers it with unpretentious lyrics and melodies. The song “Talking Pictures” is a monumental achievement for the Motorists’ in every way, and indicative of the album as a whole. Mind-blowing layered vocal harmonies, crunchy drop-D tuned guitar melodies, and Dayton-centric lyrics. Backing vocalist Kelli Byrne also does a bang-up Kim Deal-by-way-of Lucinda Williams impression. Toss in a bit of dulcimer, pedal steel, horn, and a chilling cover of Hayden’s “Bullet” and you’re left with exhaustively listenable disc of short songs. Check out these guys on their never-ending tour, coming soon to a smoky bar near you.
John Wenzel
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