There's some sort of time warping going on in deepest Minnesota; on 2004's Bumper Crop the four guys from Six Mile Grove looked like they were fresh out of school but the tight lipped portraits provided for Steel Mule show four guys who seem to have had a fair bit more than four years worth of the vicissitudes of life since then.
Well, they're tough winters in that part of the world; maybe they age a fellow a bit. Steel Mule picks up pretty much where Bumper Crop left off, which is to say that these guys are a tight unit capable of whipping up a fair old storm of rock or of being tender and contemplative, a gentle rhythm and blues-y keyboards behind a bruised vocal from Brandon Sampson.
They have a sense of landscape - the rural landscape where they grew up - that is rare in rock music, which welds itself more comfortably to urban landscapes. It's not that this is laid on with a trowel, so to speak, but phrases come through that suggest there's farming soil in these veins. More than the imagery, though, is the sense of taking your time - 'take your time, say your piece' Brandon sings at one point - that fits with the steady, laconic patience of the farming life. The music, too, has something of a sense of apple pie order, of being thoughtfully and carefully constructed so that it flows tunefully and satisfyingly from beginning to end.
This is absolutely not to say that they're no fun. They exist to entertain - themselves and as many people as possible who are prepared to pay to listen. As with Bumper Crop before it, Steel Mule is liberally sprinkled with upbeat numbers driven along by Brian Sampson's drumming, songs to get up and dance to, whilst 'Making Up For Leaving You' works up into a bit of a frenzy before dissolving into a very Wilco-like blur of noise. On the page, it's difficult to follow the drift of Brandon Sampson's lyrics but in performance the phrases fit the mood of the music and offer themselves for whatever you want to make of them; you'll sing along here and there without knowing or caring what it's all about.
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Six Mile Grove are building something pretty fine and solid out of their music and I can imagine them plugging away at this for years, probably never getting that rock star trajectory with mega bucks and limousines but never disappearing in a morass of drink and recriminations either. Solid, satisfying, always there - a bit like farming.
(John (Biscuits and gravy) Davy www.nessmp3.com/music/biscuitsandgravy)
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