Nothing Short Of Awesome
By Andy Smetanka
...in which we get the full digital lowdown on the real ragged glory of the Missoula underground, the much-anticipated first full-length by Oblio Joes. Words fail. They usually don't. It's just that good.
Donny America, hey, he still remembers the first time he cried at Jay's Upstairs, and it was right along with a night full of selections from the Obes, as they are yclept in the vernacular, songs new for him anyway and among them the same selections, bruising and delicate by turns, that have now found their way to something that noone can take away from him: the compact disc. Donny cried because he was scared, scared that the band might die before they could commit the Word to posterity, scared that nothing would be as good again as hearing "Ginger" and "Space Opera" for the first time. Donny was wrong, thankfully, and on both counts. Now it's the good kind of crying.
Take "Space Opera". Light pickwork floats between two wistful open chords like snow. Like snow in space, let's say. There is a feeling of weightlessness. It is a supremely beautiful moment. This simple structure repeats itself and the story gradually unfolds as John Brownell's voice eases into the song: "All I can say is 'I don't care...'" We learn the story of two young paramours separated when spaceships fleeing the destruction of the Third World War ("in the year two thousand and four") take them to different corners of the universe. The narrator's planet is about to be obliterated by a volcano, quashing him out as well as the five-mile-high statue he's erected to his lost love. His memory is shot; recollections of the golden days with his lady friend on Earth have been freezer-burned by all those years he was cryonically suspended in space. It's an incredibly beautiful song, distilling absolutely everything that is good about the Oblio Joes: Brownell's plangent, unadorned voice; ominous and menacing chord changes and a sparkling quasar of a guitar solo from Stu Simonson. And this is only the first song!
The 14 songs on this disc were compiled from two different recording sessions a year apart. Two summers in a row the Oblios drove down to San Jose to record with a brother's friend at his studio. It sounds like it may have been a barn, even. The recording is so spacious and roomy that every note here just kind of meanders up to the speakers to see whats going on. Most of the mid-period faves for diehard fans (and count Donny America among them) find excellent resolution here: "Ginger", "Misty and Ebenezer" and "Sloppy", as well as the older new ones of today's sets: "Skeleton Woman", "Small Hand, Big Foot" and "Anarchy Tonight". One of the reasons why the Oblio Joes work so well live and in recordings is that even when the melody is temporarily overtaken by tradeoff blasts of total stoner riffage, the listener is never more than a few steps away from Brownell's exceptional songwriting. The lyrics are personal, you could say, but they don't pertain to many persons you'd actually know. Brownell has found something on the other side of his insides, sitting tight between wistfulness and mournfulness but still undecided. The result is nothing short of awesome.
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