I JUST NEED SOMEONE TO TELL ME HOW TALL I AM
Review: Creative Loafing
By Tim Davis
The good news: This album contains a cover of a Whiskeytown song that hasn't come out yet--"Choked Up," from the semi-legendary lost album Pneumonia. The bad news: The eponymous Whiskeytown album is slated to come out (finally!) on May 22. The good news: There's a whole lot more here to recommend it than that fact alone.
The first single, "Holiday From Myself," blends a nice Matthew Sweet-ish hook with tasteful accompaniment along the lines of a Calexico or Map of Wyoming. Other highlights include the title track, "Road Movies," the banality/societal indictment "Sheer Volume of Traffic," and the requisite love-gone-wrong-or-just-gone-away rumblers "I Know Without Asking" and "Lost in the Details." This is American roots music, synthesized through British sensibilities and, as is often apt, a primer to just where this kind of music can go without diluting what made you like it in the first place; it's like George Jones and Tom Jones meeting in a bar and five hours later walking out arm in arm.
From Creative Loafing
Originally published May 5, 2001
© 2001, Creative Loafing Charlotte Inc.
