- Label: 'Kith And Kin Records'
- Genre: 'Alt/Country'
- Release Date: '21.8.26.'
Our Rating:
Naquera is the new album by One Eleven Heavy man Nick Mitchell who is in, for me dreaded Jam band scene, the album even features a Grateful Dead Midi Tech/musician to send shivers up my spine of worry. His band is made up of Steve Carty, Tony Leone, Gavin Rushing, Otto Wilberg, with guest spots from Bob Bralove, Hans Chew, Aaron Feder and James Toth.
The album opens with Two Right Feet that uses an old Graham Parker riff to good purpose, explaining why he has Two Right Feet, all the trouble it causes from cigarette burns to pangs of guilt that Pub rock is no longer the next big thing.
Critical Mass (Feat Bob Bralove) has soaring guitars with blues inflected honky tonk piano, while he tries to reach Critical Mass and have some chance of turning a profit for his efforts, before the noodling guitar turns more corners than needed, vocally it get complicated, like the way this song sounds is like a cross between the worst bits of Steely Dan and the best bits of Little Feat, I can't decide if I love it or hate it. Los Serranos has a gorgeous brass section, laid back, just smooth enough that just keep going like the background music in a cocktail bar.
Riki Rachtman opens with a cool piano flourish, before it goes all Rockingbirds loose, bluegrass country twanging, for a song about a friend who always made them watch Headbangers Ball while deeply inebriated, not even able to tell the difference between Poison and Venom, sadly Riki Rachtman no longer rocks out, taking some sad country twists for one more night at The Cathouse, which if I remember rightly was in San Francisco where I saw Sister Double Happiness all those years ago, this song evokes and opens up a lot of memories, it's the tune you need to hear on this album.
The Angle is where the guitar line and Piano motif meet, it jars a bit till the brass section comes in to complete the musical triangle they are playing, for this tale of schoolboys and young adventures that is full of American everyday imagery, I really like the music on this tune, but don't connect to the lyrics at all. Then the long meandering fusion instrumental hits, if only I could hear it without the guitar it would be great, way too noodly for my tastes.
Flamebait has cool loping brass, piano strutting away while Nick lets us know what he considers Flamebait, while trying to avoid watching the end of democracy and a world going up in flames with no way to turn the ship around, so lets just jam till the end of time, while making a plea for truth to make a comeback, with a different kind of hegemony.
Crosshairs is sad downbeat drums and horns with descending piano flourishes getting us caught in a Manhattan Transfer like cafe easy listening Crosshairs. The album closes with The First P.O.W. that all sounds slightly out of sync, in weird time signatures an episodic fusion piano blues, that pounds at your door begging you to listen to it, trying to figure out just why he was slinging reefer, trying to get by, this is all gangster country oddness, his last days of freedom before he moves into the big house. While telling the story of the start of the war on Marijuana.
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