It took nine albums, but New Jersey’s The Successful Failures have finally gotten around to a concept album. The band has a solid track record for writing compelling characters into their songs, so it was just a matter of time before they got around to it.
And James Cotton Mathers certainly does not disappoint. From the opening track, “Naval Victories,” it’s clear from the moment you hear Mick Chorba’s distinctly powerful vocals that this is still very much a Successful Failures album, with its devotion to hooks, melodies and straight-ahead rock guitars, and not some pompous exercise in fantastical story telling.
The songs here focus on the album’s namesake, young at the start of the record, growing up in Maine; His father, a sailor carrying on a long family tradition, ends up dying at sea, scaring James away from following in his footsteps. Across the album, we follow him as leaves to find himself meeting a slew of characters along thee way. At different points on the record, he becomes a lumberjack back in Maine, starts to grow content, sees more death and eventually learns to get by. On the surface, not exactly the stuff of Rush’s 2112 or even My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, but the seemingly simple concept belies just how great these songs are.
Tracks like the menacing “Let the Power Go Through You” and the emotional “The Seas Roll Mountain High” would tack on nicely to any of the band’s earlier efforts, regardless of the very specific topics covered in the lyrics here. There are a couple of mediocre moments on the album, like on the repetitive “Tiger Gravel Opposition Child,” but there are far more great moments here to make up for it.
It’s barely been a year since the band put out their last LP, 2020’s Pack Up Your Shadows, so it’s surprising to see another full length this soon, especially a fully thought-out concept record. But as the songs on James Cotton Mather prove out, the time was certainly well spent.
