
Miles on the Rail
A near perfect melding of country and rock (but not country rock, dammit) and will get moneymakers shakin' from Bakersfield to Boston. Honky tonk stylings and indie-rock chutzpah...
A near perfect melding of country and rock (but not country rock, dammit) and will get moneymakers shakin' from Bakersfield to Boston.
We love the classic honky-tonk templates in the vein of Buck Owens and Lefty Frizzell butting against the chutzpah of indie-rock luminaries like Jason & the Scorchers and the Long Ryders. Toss in a guitar player who threads a line between Johnny Cash's Luther Perkins and the Replacements' Bob Stinson, and a pedal steel player (Jon Rauhouse) renowned far and wide for his swashbuckling style, and, brother, you're in high heaven.
Like their early contempories the Old 97s, the Grievous Angels took a train beat, messed it up, added the energy of a punk show and the heart of well-traveled, broken-hearted story teller to come up with a fresh sound(well, as fresh as anything can be coming out of the scalp-searing Arizona desert.)
The soaring guitars and harmonies, with that pedal steel weaving in and out, give songs like "Seven Engines" and "Ten Feet Away" a scope reflecting the wide open spaces of the West. "Sin Away" and " and "Might Be You" wouldn't have been out of place in a honky-tonk, as long as they didn't mind the amps being turned up a notch or two.
There's also a little Tom Waits number ("Cold, Cold Ground") cuz these dudes all had cool record collections.
CHOICE CUTS:
Seven Engines
Might Be You
Cold Cold Ground
Sin Away