[rating=7.00]
The Reverend Horton Heat loomed large for this reviewer in the 90s who was a huge fan of 1994’s Al Jourgensen-produced Liquor in the Front, but never felt the need to listen to more of the band’s psychobilly work. So I was excited to see the band is still around, making new music. Whole New Life is the classic Horton Heat sound, but dialed down a few notches, which makes sense given that frontman/guitarist/heart-of-the-band Jim Heath is almost 60 years old.
The joy of classic Reverend Horton Heat is the intensity. Early albums, like Liquor, featured relatively standard rockabilly played with lots of distortion at a breakneck pace. It was never heavy metal, but you could see why metalheads loved it. Whole New Life doesn’t have any tracks with that kind of manic abandon. The guitar tones are fairly clean and the band has even added a piano player, taking them in more of a classic rockabilly direction and away from their previous punk-inspired work.
It can be tough to be an artist working in a specific, well-defined genre, like revival rockabilly. At a certain point, there’s no place left to take your songwriting. The Stray Cats couldn’t have released a New Wave album. The Cramps wouldn’t have had much luck with a grunge album. And so artists are faced with the choice of either continuing to make familiar music or starting over with a new sound. The Reverend Horton Heat is continuing with the familiar, but with a more restrained energy.
The addition of Matt Jordan’s piano helps to refresh the band’s sound, though. It provides a shot of energy on the gospel-tinged title track that, while fast and upbeat, doesn’t have the reckless abandon I associate with the band. Jordan’s piano is also key to their cover of Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas,” which is surprisingly faithful to the original, not even daring to push the tempo or to let a little punk rock out of the garage.
Heath’s voice is more exposed than previous releases, too. Rather than saturating it with reverb, it’s often front and center in the mix without any effects. “Hate to See You Cry,” with its clean guitars is almost country and Heath’s voice matches with a twang of its own. “Sunrise Through the Power Lines,” which is more rock than rockabilly, also has his unadorned voice at the center of the song. For listeners used to his spookier singing voice, which is what happens when it’s cloaked in echo, hearing Heath this way is a bit of an adjustment.
You never want to ding an artist for doing something different. The Reverend Horton Heat has made 12 albums. They’ve earned the right to deviate, if only slightly. And the slight deviation might be the real challenge of this album. It’s just similar enough to their previous work to make you reflexively compare. If the band had really pulled itself into a different direction, like, perhaps, abandoning Heath’s guitar and going to a piano trio, it certainly would have tripped up some fans, but it also might have made more of a statement.
One Response
I loved the music but I felt very uncomfortable when the guest performer asked people that had left the LDS faith to raise their hands. Then he sang a song that I didn’t really understand about it. It made me feel like I was sinning. I am disabled and I am just trying to do the best I can. And I felt attacked. That’s my church! It’s my life my very being. Don’t do that again. Please