Canyon candy --- Javelin --- Recommended by Junkyard Donner
Having listened to, and enjoyed, as above, Strawfoot I thought this would be a good way to continue my odyssey into a different side of Country Music. I remembered Steph posting about this in her journal a little while back and thought I'd give it a go. Started off well, with "Fievel goes west" sounding very, er, western-y, and then "Cowpoke" was good too, but a little bit in they started using these bloody phased samples --- I don't know what you call them: where the sound seems to come and go and warp, stop and start, that sort of thing ---which quickly becomes very annoying.
It's not the worst album, but it soon becomes apparent these guys are not serious and are just arseing around. Look, maybe they are serious but they don't come across that way. To me, this sounds like some college kids who broke into a studio on the way home from some frat party and decided to see what they could create with the equipment there. It's got a vaguely western/cowboy theme but it's very heavy-handed in nature, with lots of pedal steel, fiddles and sounds of horses walking, plus those deep-voiced vocals many Country singers utilise.
It's clever in its way, but it starts to become a case of Javelin beating you over the head with their "cleverness" and it wears old rather rapidly. By halfway through the album I had decided to give it up but persevered to the end just so I could say I did. But it's honestly at times like listening to parts of the soundtrack to every old cowboy movie you ever saw. Doesn't help that the tracks all come in around one to two minutes long, so any decent ideas don't hang around long enough to develop into anything.
I know Steph loved this, but well maybe it sounds better when you're drunk. I'm not drunk. I'm just glad I Spotified this, because if I had paid for it, no matter how little, it would have been too much. There's such a thing as being too clever guys. Not for me.
Rec rating: Honestly I can only manage a poor
4/10, and that's being generous. Won't be listening to this again.