[rating=8.00]
Railroad Earth’s latest album, Last of the Outlaws, finds the sextet both exploring some new territory in the studio while at the same time giving their fans a healthy dose of what they have been used to since the band’s inception in 2001—tightly-crafted music that tells a story and seems to get better each time it’s heard. RRE enjoys popularity in several genres ranging from bluegrass to folksy Americana to new-grass to improvisational. They refuse to stay put in any area too long, and Last of the Outlaws offers listeners an opportunity to hear the band as never before.
Last of the Outlaws opens with “Chasing a Rainbow,” a fiddle-fueled romp with a catchy hook and then the album slows down considerably with the title track. Using subdued and sparse instrumentation, the emphasis here is on the lyrics’ plea for the return of a friend or relative who has lost their way. Things then get back into the RRE swing with “Grandfather Mountain”, a tribute to the namesake mountain that features Andy Goessling’s dobro and Tim Carbone’s fiddle highlighting Todd Sheaffer’s plaintive vocals.
The fourth track on Last of the Outlaws is the biggest departure from the typical RRE catalog. The band’s first long-form composition, “All That’s Dead May Live Again/Face with a Hole”, is essentially two different songs, both lyrically and tonally, linked together with three distinct movements. This suite is far from what one might expect from a band that is known to easily open up and extend a song through improvisation. Hinting at a more progressive-rock approach, this track’s arrangements are tightly played, with tempo changes and multiple instruments playing the same leads together at times. The “All That’s Dead May Live Again/Face with a Hole” suite reveals yet another facet to the RRE gem– discipline and structure that many bands who tour as much as they do can only long for.
“Monkey” is a rocking number reminiscent of Tom Petty at his best. It is a classic RRE tune with its positive down-to-earth theme bolstered by a robust whole-band sound, here with added horns and piano. Also squarely in the rock and roll camp is “When the Sun Gets in Your Blood”. Here, Goessling’s banjo provides locomotion, but Carbone and bassist Andrew Altman employ electric guitar and bass to add a rock edge to the song. Backed by a steady Carey Harmon on drums, these two songs showcase the band’s full sound with all six members contributing significantly. The band retains the full rock and roll instrumentation on “One More Night on the Road”, with John Skehan’s piano providing a rollicking boogie beat for the rest of the guys to play over. These songs, although not as acoustic as earlier RRE albums, nonetheless retain the organic feeling of the band by not being over-produced–the listener can really feel the energy of the band’s live performance coming through in the studio.
The album closes with the appropriately-named “Take a Bow”. After the four previous tunes, all of which are a little more “plugged-in” than what RRE fans may be accustomed to, “Take a Bow” is a beautiful reminder of the band in their stripped-down simplicity. With more blurgrass-oriented instrumentation (dobro, fiddle, mandolin) the song hearkens us back to the days of their first few albums.
Last of the Outlaws is an exciting album because it documents a departure for the band in their willingness to explore new arrangements. Despite differences in style and tempo, all tracks showcase songwriter Sheaffer’s penchant for storytelling and the band’s ability to move through genres by expertly using different instrumentation. This may be RRE’s most enduring quality–the members’ willingness and ability to bring many sounds to the stage and studio and not confine themselves to a particular niche–a philosophy that is exemplified in Last of the Outlaws.
One Response
Great review.