Benjamin Tod put his latest solo album out two years ago, the same year as the latest – and what was supposed to be the last – Lost Dog Street Band record. To mangle a Replacements’ lyric, turns out the last one wasn’t the last.
“I thought I was done with Lost Dog, but after recording my solo album, I looked over all the songs that I had ready for a new record,” Tod said. “These were songs for my band. I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t done with Lost Dog.”
And if Survived, the latest effort from the Lost Dog Street Band, is the end of the line (and no one has yet said it is), they are going out on one hell of an album.
In their most consistent album yet, the songs here are confident while still being enjoyably loose, partly due to the band changing up the way they recorded, opting to lay down all parts of the 10 songs here live versus coming back and recording overdubs. The band’s classic country sound, accented with fiddle and mandolin throughout, is still at the core of the band’s sound, but Tod’s vocals have gotten stronger and his writing more confident in the decade-plus they’ve been playing together. Songs like the upbeat waltz, “If You Leave Me Now” and the bluegrass-focused “Brighter Shade” that opens the record, take the long tradition of country love songs and infuse them with some truly inspired lyrics. Similarly, “Muhlenberg County Line,” about finally coming home, takes a seemingly generic topic and fleshes it out with remarkably deep lines for a strong emotional punch.
The only song here that seems a bit out of place is “Hubbardville Store,” a nearly five-decade old country/folk tune penned by Larry Murray. It’s dark and tragic and deftly shows off the band’s musical prowess but seems out of place on this record. For a band that was considered over just a couple of years ago, Survived (apt title) should be more than enough proof that they still have a lot left in the tank.
