fLyin sHoes reviewS

 

The Cultivators

Mama’s Kitchen

( Hayden’s Ferry Records, 1999.)

The Cultivators are a bunch of geeks, nerds and dweebs. Or so it

would seem looking through the booklet accompanying this CD. Good job

then that frontman, and Uberdork, Dan Israel can write a decent pop

song, because the cover art for Mama’s Kitchen certainly doesn’t do

him and the rest of his band any favours with its Clip Art-and-a-scanner

feel. The band have been gaining momentum in the States, even getting

some good airplay, and opening song All Alone reveals a formula of

country-tinged pop so predictable you can sing

the next line before you’ve heard it. And that’s no bad thing – think

of the rewards its had for the likes of the Jayhawks or Wilco. In

fact bringing these bands to mind you won’t be a million miles from

the Cultivator’s sound – crisp guitars, rasping hammonds and a

Tweedy-esque vocal for good measure. With the fourth track in, Happy

Again, the group reveal a more roots- / Americana- based sensibility

which they pull off with equal conviction, fiddle et al, and this

comes as a welcome diversion to the album’s continuity. Unfortunately

this is not exploited further and instead Israel veers more towards

the man we anticipate from the cover photos: tales of insecurity

(Mama’s Kitchen) and slushy nostalgia (Graduation Day), which become

a bit laboured, the Cultivators losing the zest of the first half of

the record and lapsing into late-80’s bar-room rock at times.

However, these songs are the minority on an album that includes some

fine moments of the most blatant pop kind, and they should prove a

good precursor to the Cultivators inevitable success.

'Colonel' Antony Green.
 

Richmond Fontaine

Lost Son

(Cavity Search 1999)

"There was a broken TV next to one that was on, was a bong, and

handcuffs and mail that hadn’t been opened in weeks." So recounts

Richmond Fontaine’s Willy Vlautin in Hope and Repair, another attempt

of his to bring to song the same sordid vision of middle America that

the likes of Raymond Carver and Larry Brown have brought to

literature. All very well if you like that kind of thing and on paper

(i.e. Lost Son’s lyric sheet) these tales of murdering security

guards, car crashing runaway teens and relationships with prostitutes

make good reading. The problem comes in performance: Richmond

Fontaine prove to the audience that their forte lies in creating a

monumental wall of sound reminiscent of early Ride or Nirvana, as

showcased on opener Savior of Time and the

metal-meets-nice-pedal-steel-bit masterpiece Mule, and they never

really seem convincing when they’re doing the slow thing. A bit

concerning then that the ‘slow thing’ is what they do for the other 9

tracks of the album. Despite the erstwhile efforts of a production

team who’ve crafted lo-fi landmarks in the past by the likes of

Elliot Smith and Quasi it becomes clear that Vlautin isn’t suited to

acoustic performance and that he should stick to the punkier end of

proceedings where his style of writing sounds much more at home, as

do the rest of the band. It is worth re-emphasising how good the

aforementioned highlights are, but unfortunately the rest of Lost Son

is unlikely to offer listeners anything that they haven’t heard

already, on another album, being done much better.

'Colonel' Antony Green.