CARDBOARD COWBOY produced their first 10 track CD album, "Unload Your Head" in 2004. With magnificent tracks like "The Rise and Fall of Ricky Rollercoaster" and "If It Don’t Feel Like Rock and Roll" that was quality ore.
Now guess what? … Yee hah! … here they are already with twelve more nuggets from the Gold Mine on the edge of town. Dave James (assisted here and there by the band) can certainly write a good rockin' tune.
The seam they are working is long and pure, with old prospectors like Carl Perkins, Lonnie Donnegan, George Harrison, Robbie Robertson and Roger McGuinn having chewed themselves small fortunes with lumps of that Western Swing influenced rock and roll hoedown stuff. You might guess that there's a contemporary Liverpool sort of twang to this. But I don’t hear it.
When "Helicopters" pushes its emotionally nudging guitar chords straight into your reviewers soft spot, that special physical moment establishes the primitive bond. It does what favourite albums always do. They bubble gently for a play or two. And then there's a shaft of sunshine, a rise of elation, and that blissful mood that only well-balanced music can bring. After that, every track takes on a new resonance and every line becomes significant. Back we go for afters, and more besides. If you pick up a copy – take my advice and stick with it. It’s a grower.
Sweet blackbird song, gentle acoustic guitar and subtle stand-up bass leads you gently in to "Lady Brown" at track one. But there's a more astringent current running through its heart, and that edginess stays with CARDBOARD COWBOY throughout the album.
MOR Easy Listening it is not. Dave James is not a comfortable tenor, for sure. Benchmarks would be over in the Woodie Guthrie school of singing in a good straight line and leaving the sugared balm to someone else. Track two ("I'm not sleeping") starts with rippling mandolin, quickly disrupted by a downbeat kind of vocal and each subsequent track has that, or some other kind of peppery sauce to intensify the pleasure by keeping things close enough to harsh reality to sound true.
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The phrase creative tension comes to mind. But repetitiveness certainly does not. Astutely following the George Martin school of album production, each track gets an additional sound or instrument, keeping the band on their toes, and refreshing the listener every time. These are strong songs, with grown up production. A piano, a harmonica, a particular synth sound. It’s all cunningly but simply done. "Can't Be Alone" could even be a lost Beatles track from that glorious period when "Rubber Soul" was being made. I can hear a hint of the tune from "In My Life". The surreal rhymes of "Condoleeza" have a harpsichord sound, and a respectfully distant echo of "Lovely Rita". It really is quite lovely.
The high point for me is "Helicopters". Like "If It Don't Feel Like Rock And Roll" on the first album it starts well, and builds to that magnificently restrained guitar sequence that puts the soul into freefall and sends the serotonin surging round the veins. And being in a well-produced album it marks a special point in a thoroughly enjoyable journey through twelve worthwhile tracks and no fillers.
www.cardboardcowboy.com
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