[rating=4.00]
2008 was quite a year for artistic revival. Portishead remerged from a 10-year hiatus to create an album wholly beyond themselves. Mickey Rourke overcame a bruised reputation to achieve an incredible portrayal of, well, himself. Now, it appears that Georgia-based southern rockers Bloodkin have set the benchmark for artistic rediscovery in 2009.
“Lets take a road trip, its been a while,” croons Hutchens on “Summer in Georgia,” the closing track from the band’s February release, Baby, They Told Us We Would Rise Again. Ostensibly, the song is about endless summer days “hot and slow as Jalapeño honey.” But far more than this, it is about the friendship between Bloodkin’s founding members, Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter; as well as an optimistic look at the days ahead.
While we played spaceman and burned action figures, Hutchens and Carter studied music. While we foolishly chased women, they lamented about the heartbreak we unknowingly pursued. Since then, they have experienced a prolific, albeit tumultuous, musical career. In 2005, they released Last Night Out, their own Abbey Road of sorts, before parting ways. But the bonds remained too strong for Hutchens and Carter. Together they rose from the ashes of old, and produced an album about rediscovering music with an old friend.
The album shifts between bluesy dirges, twangy country riffs, and popular barroom ballads. The bluesy lament “Viper” acts as a sort of prologue that frames the band’s reunion and hints at better days to follow. “Rhododendron” pays homage to the state flower of West Virginia, while simultaneously recognizing the band’s wild and ornamental roots. The album’s poppiest number is “Little Margarita,” a song catchy enough to come warbling out of a barroom jukebox, and at the same time piercing and lyrically reflective.
The album closes in a fitting manner, with the aforementioned “Summer in Georgia.” “Lets take a road trip, its been a while,” Hutchens and Carter sing, extending their hands to one another. Together they have reveled in springtime moments of inspiration, and together they have braved long and dreary winters of uncertainty and tumult. Twenty years later, and many seasons past, the band has changed, but the music and the friendship remain. And once again, it is summer in Georgia.
