Saturday, August 13, 2011

Curtis Evans and Our Friends Electric - Life With The Buffalo

This is an album for people who like little surprises. The first track I heard from this album was "You and Me." Judging by the title, I thought it was going to be a love song. "You and me and the devil make three." It's quite dark. Despite the depressing lyrics, it still carries a beautiful duet. 
I was surprised again when I listened to the album. The second track, "Baltimore," repeats the lyric "In Baltimore there are mothers pleading / All our babies have x's on their eyes." Whoa. I knew this was dark but that is some heavy stuff. Then I got to the seventh track, "Mark of the Beast." It really grooves and the guitar is pretty ripping. It's not the kind of song I would expect to hear when there's nature photography on the cover sleeve and the first half is mostly acoustic. And I REALLY didn't expect the next song, "Sister." It's got a guitar riff that reminds me a little of Black Sabbath! "What if I can't wake up, sister?" And then on the track after, it's another slow song. "Won't Serve in Heaven" is a beautiful song that questions what qualifies us into heaven. "The Good Life" is a bitter song about being paranoid. "Will she kill me in the night?"
This showed me just how versatile Curtis Evans can be. The entire album features songs of different styles but they all seem to make sense next to each other. This is definitely a unique album and I hate to try and categorize into just one genre. "Life With The Buffalo" is out now on Grape Juice Records.





1 comment: