Album Review: "Important Things Humans Should Know" by Dirty Bourbon River Show

Important Things Humans Should Know

What is music?

I saw an internet meme recently that said art is how we color spaces and music is how we color time.

Thinking about music as coloring time is a very interesting concept to me. It's amazing how some kinds of music are lost to time and how some kinds of music transcend time.

The Stoner/Groove/Doom Metal movement was a way to bring back the music of Black Sabbath after being painted by Cream.

There are many other kinds of music where antiquated styles are taken and done up in a more modern fashion. Then there are artists who take a genre of music that just no longer exists and breathe life into it again.

Today we consider the latter in the form of Dirty Bourbon River Show.

Dirty Bourbon River Show

When this album starts, it's likely to give any modern listener a bit of a start.

We  have all been conditioned like Pavlov's Dogs when it comes to popular music.

There'd better be a guitar and a rhythm section. The vocals need to be this way or that way.

Well, Dirty Bourbon River Show is not doing anything remotely akin to American popular music. Their sound, their songs, their style, it all looks back to a different time in America.

A simpler time and a drearier time.

There was a time when music was the only escape from the Depression, the wars, the bank failures, the stock market.

Let's have some more of that please.

They toe the line between jazz and vaudeville coming up with something amazing. The songs are bouncy and full of horns.

Sometimes there's a strong piano line or some guitar work. It would appear that there's no set lineup for what these guys do. It's no like one of them plays the guitar, another plays the bass, etc. Each song seems to have a bit of a different formation.

The vocals...now here's where things get interesting. I like to paint the picture of the sound, but I don't think my picture would sound too flattering, even though I mean it in such a great way.

The vocals go from gritty, to drunk, to a mouthful of chaw.

It just fits so perfectly.

Release: 4/7/15
Genre: Americana
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