number seven uptown review

review taken from stylus

Evan Chakroff

Through the pelting rain a blanket of stars stretches out across the country, the stoic rush hour ghost that stalks every interstate at the same hour each day, returning every 24 in an endless cycle, to remind me that this country is nothing if not a vast expanse of homogenous suburbia, that these small towns I crawl by through the sheets of rain could be the outskirts of any city. Boston to Dayton is no farther than the distance from laser to ear as I put Number Seven Uptown in the discman and roll slowly down the highway.

No other album I know provides an equally perfect soundtrack to foggy throughway ennui, smoky basement late nights, or pot-addled rips down small town roads. At times uptempo, at times slow, distorted versus clean, this album rolls in and out of tune like a warped record scarred by loving overplay, not by heat damage or acts of god.

Recorded and presented like a home made four-track tape, Swearing at Motorists's second full album plays like a well-made mixtape, a labor of love. Moments of sheer brilliance (the slide guitar and trumpet meld on "Calgon Take Me Away" is spectacular) are matched in equal parts by the very definition of mediocrity. Doughman's double-tracked vocals are slightly out of tune on half the songs, but the warble between the tracks perfectly encapsulates the mix of balls-out sleeve-worn bravado and nervous innocence that pervades this entire album.

The album swings to every end of the emotional spectrum (at least, the insulated/padded spectrum that exists in most of suburban America, free from the criminal reality of city life, free from the rural malaise, bored kids over-emote over loves lost and found, spend too much time driving high, but the exploded microcosmic palette is as convincing as the macro when played with such sincerity). Doughman tries to "get high enough to concentrate," but never really succeeds: the epic centerpiece of the album stretches to nearly four minutes, but the remaining songs pass in one to three, shifting gears as often as a standard in limbo between first and second.

A product of Dayton, Ohio, Swearing At Motorists may tread to far across the country line for some indie-rockers, but for every slide guitar there's a fuzzed-out chorus and for every drawl there's a compelling instrumental passage, showing influences from lo-fi to post-rock.

If you let it, Number Seven Uptown will convince you that cigarette-butt-filled beer bottles are as beautiful as their hopped counterparts... that a chipped guitar is as wonderful as a sparkling new one.

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