The fifth full-length album by this bunch of upstate New York roots rockers comes with vocal assistance from Marshall Crenshaw, Tania Elizabeth , Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell . Tellingly, the latter two are both long-time members of Bruce Springsteen’s band.
The opening track - Take The Wheel - sets the tone with the determination to “ drive all night” and where suggestive references to his female passenger to the vehicle’s engine power suggest that the singer has other things on his mind other than the road trip.
Having written music for advertising agencies, children's publishers, and video game projects, Frank Migliorelli clearly knows how to write catchy tunes. However, hummable melodies don’t necessarily turn earworms into firm favourites.
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The nine tracks will all sound okay on a car radio so, in that sense, it seems to be a case of mission accomplished but I can’t shake the notion that they amount to little more than a poor man’s Tom Petty.
Fire Road is described as a driving political commentary and the album closes with ‘Radio Safe Edit’ of this song which is two seconds shorter to bleep out a radio announcer’s use of the f-word when warning of the rise of fascism. This sums up the no alarms, no surprises approach of the record as a whole.
Dirtnappers’ website
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