When this one starts up, acoustic strumming is undercut in a subtle fashion with some nice backwards guitar (or is it pedal steel? Hard to say). The texture then thickens with a little bit of tasty Telecaster. From then on, things get pretty darned normal, settling into an easy country-rock groove in the neighborhood of, maybe, Tom Petty without the compelling vocals.
The whole album is full of competently played, similarly pleasant low-key rock, complete with pedal steel. And that is, it’s true, an accomplishment of its own, as anybody who’s tried to complete a CD can attest. But it’s hard not to feel a little sold down the river when the lyrical content is rather like a distanced description of some better lyrics. The singer/songwriter world is full of folks blandly trying to evoke some sort of twilit, wistful American nostalgia that mostly centers on old guys, trucks, road trips and the South. All are present and accounted for here, but these cupcakes come without the creamy filling.
In the first tune, "Breakin Away," Cate says, "It’s 5 o’clock/ headin’ down south/ the sun is about to go down." Which leaves me feeling pretty underwhelmed–heading south is not of itself particularly compelling or evocative. By the second track, the gig is up: an "old-timer" tells our narrator "all about himself." Which was probably pretty cool, but we never get to hear what it was about this aged fellow that made him worth writing a song about except that he wanted "fame and fortune in a wild way."
Not to bellyache, because competency is itself a rare commodity, and this is well-played. Still. Call me curmudgeonly, but I like my cupcakes with the filling and all. Lyrics, they ain’t gotta be boring–in fact, they’re often what saves safely genre-fied music from being an exercise in the tired old expected groove.
