Verbena - Souls for Sale
UNSUNG Album of June
(S-Tier)
Was never much of a Black Crowes fan when they came out. Sure, I loved the Stones and the Faces but it was missing something. No disrespect to producer George Drakoulias, who despite thin qualifications (knew Rick Rubin, had a band, music major NYU/left one semester from degree) besides a good ear really guided them in the direction best-suited to success. (I’m also a big fan of Drakoulias’ production of Tift Merrit’s 2004 Memphis-flavored Tambourine.)
Which is a long way to suggest this is the album the Rolling Stones would’ve made if they dumped the prancing lips and replaced it with Iggy Pop then added Heart’s Nancy Wilson as a second guitarist to sweeten the pot. Second guitarist Anne Griffin doesn’t take the lead but her backing vocals are the secret sauce to this delicious mess of grimy, punk-inflected greasy southern soul. You gain weight just listening to these succulent rifts.
Lead guitarist/singer A.A. Bondy makes no bones about the jock he’s riding, entitling one of the song’s “Me and Keith.” If this was just a Stonesy rip I doubt it would’ve had the legs. There’s a young pissed-off, bite-me vibe seeping from the pores of the disc, like the distortion-drenched (vague Dream Syndicate intonation) album-closing “Real,” also sometimes known as “Kiss Yourself,” about the emptiness of the media/fashion maw: “Let’s just pretend that we’re real / Shit Brother, looks like it feels.”
“Me and Keith” imagines some great procession of compliance, “the boys sing, the girls cry, to watch the animals falling in line,” concluding with a nod to non conformity, “remember the days when your friends all looked naked and strange.”
While it’s not quite a top-to-bottom classic – I still can’t get with the ballad “Postcard Blues” – it’s strong throughout, and the last five songs rock nearly as well as the first five. That said, the first three (to four) are outrageously sweet, and why I consciously saved the best for last.
The driving riff beneath “Hot Blood” and the similarly slanted vocal effect is jagged and joined by a chiming guitar counterpoint like a siren. Between the churning hum and the backing vocals I just want to jump up, and it rolls into a similarly sexually themed, “Shaped Like a Gun,” and whose opening feels like a nod to the Stones’ “Bitch.” To this day, I still mutter the refrain at times, “Hands are smart and heart is dumb.”
A second straight very cool guitar intro with “Junk for Fashion.” Hardly anybody does these anymore and he’s got two great ones in a row. This is the song of the album, fueled by this frenetic bass line and the lurid, Junk/Casual Sex (“kissing your friends is the most fun”) metaphor, which we all know in either case always ends well. Like “Real” there’s another allusion to be sold oblivion as just another product as the core of the refrain is “Hate is a statement, I like it for fashion,” a self-abnegating ode if ever there were one. Also a very cool, climactic close.
“Song That Ended Your Career” is their most successful ballad, reminiscent to me of the Chapel Hill crew Kingsbury Manx in its shambling psych-folk amble and warm chording. It’s a song dedicated to the slow struggle and need for community: “Maybe we could sing together / Just once until it's better.”
I really loved this comment from Juliana Hatfield about feeling this album was really dry – in that it’s unprocessed, and with very little in overdubs or added effects to make it pop. “It's not if you go back and listen to it. It's just really raw,” Hatfield concludes.
It was produced by David Fridmann, bassist from Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips preferred producer – this is a guy who knows how to go big, but on this album – it’s definitely not Steve Albini – but the reverb and the effects are subtle enough to simply support the raw energy oozing out of the songs. With good enough cake, you don’t need much frosting.
Just a terrific disc. I’m not alone, apparently the ring-bearer is also a huge fan. Unfortunately they got produced by Dave Grohl who helped them make an album without so much space, which sounded a lot like his old band. Griffin's vocals were buried or forgotten and she quit the band the day of the album release, fed up. She returned after the national tour but didn't stick. Without Griffin they were a much more pedestrian act imo. Not bad, but not that unique, sorta like Whiskeytown without Caitlin Cary (see also, Ryan Adams).
