I received a hand writ­ten note from the pub­li­cist of Jum­ber­lack Media inform­ing me that he did not send me a press release because “You always bash our press releases.” This hon­est admis­sion throws rocks against my long held asser­tion that pub­li­cists are full of more crap than music crit­ics. Fur­ther­more, I apol­o­gize to any other folks who have been trau­ma­tized or offended by my con­tempt of silly press releases. I now declare a 24-hour mora­to­rium on fur­ther press release bash­ing. I reviewed That’s Him! That’s the Guy! (THTTG) about 18 months ago and remem­bered that I enjoyed their no frills brand of melodic folk rock.

“The Wed­ding Song” opens Army Life and it’s a pretty one that is gen­er­ous on melody and offers a qual­ity vocal per­for­mance accom­pa­nied by a laid back, blue grass vibe. “Pol­ish Lancers” a reflec­tive song, is impres­sive for its poetic qual­ity and eco­nomic arrange­ment rem­i­nis­cent of artists like Phil Ochs and Gor­don Light­foot. It is an exam­ple of suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of mood, vocal per­for­mance and musi­cian­ship. The happy man­dolin and banjo almost sound incon­gru­ent with the somber lyri­cal theme of “Gold Truck One” (A Cease Fire) yet it actu­ally works well in sup­port­ing a story of divorce told from a child’s per­spec­tive. “A Jody Call” uses acoustic gui­tar and glock­en­spiel to accom­pany a ter­rific vocal har­mony per­for­mance in the tra­di­tion of David Crosby and Gra­ham Nash. The down home Appalachian banjo and coun­try ped­dle steel sup­ply the req­ui­site mood for “Gold Truck Two” (Grandpa Sonny), which is another youth­ful rec­ol­lec­tion trans­formed into an engag­ing song. Another stand­out is “Red Folder,” a track about a man leav­ing his wife a will with instruc­tions on what to do in the event he is killed. It has an earnest power that is rem­i­nis­cent of the work of John Prine, in the sense that it con­veys a nar­ra­tive with­out flow­ery poetry or haughty pretension.

Army Life is a quan­tum leap in artistry for this tal­ented duo, as the songs are well writ­ten, sim­ply pro­duced and allowed to flow with space and relaxed tem­pos. It is a per­sonal record that offers obser­va­tions on life, rela­tion­ships and con­flict with­out message-laden lyrics. I have always sub­scribed to the notion that the best bands are the ones that play together a long time and hone their sound and writ­ing. If this record is any indi­ca­tion of the progress of THTTG as musi­cians and song­writ­ers, then they have set the bar high indeed, evok­ing col­or­ful, authen­tic images of work­ing class Americana.

Army Life is now avail­able via Jum­ber­lack.

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