Chuck Melchin has been making music with his “loose collective” of musicians from Cambridge, Massachusetts since 2006. In that time he has released three full length CDs a four song EP, and a further EP with his side project Los Brujos.
This compilation album contains 14 songs from across the catalogue plus four recently recorded bonus tracks.
The band name may conjure up an image of unsophisticated yokels but this retrospective is full of classy Americana rather than a set of predictable hoedowns. Burning Sky, for example, is positively Calexico-esque.
This means that Melchin’s tongue in cheek dismissal of the collection as ”More than just an hour of murder ballads and songs about beer” is misleading. The best songs are personal and unafraid to reflect the singer’s self-doubts. Warrior widens the range further by narrating the struggles of an amputee returning from war.
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It may not necessarily win lots of new fans but the album is a useful one-stop introduction to the band’s solid ongoing contribution to alternative country music.
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