Boston music magazine The Noise reviewed Around These Parts for their April issue. Check it out!
JO HENLEY
Around These Parts
10 tracks
These guys are great. The ease and grace of their playing comes through like a live performance in the spirited little guitar riffs, and the subtle touches of mandolin and banjo. I’m heartened by the love for earth expressed in the song “The Last Monkey Maker”: “We can tar all our hillsides with roads/ Turn our art into binary codes/ You can’t know where you’re going/ If you don’t know what you left behind/ When the last monkey maker leaves town.”
“Deep in the Dirt” is a sad lament about love and loss, with wonderful vocal support by Hayley Sabella. “Under your knees/ As you free your garden of weeds/ The sky shines in my face/ Under your weight/I feel the ache of your hurt/ And I hear your remorse/ Deep in the Dirt.” “Jericho” flies along under a ripping melody supported with mandolin and impassioned vocal. “I want your love/ I need your love.” Those words have been in many songs; I feel them in this one. Fear is a theme that can find solace in a song. “Wait til May” speaks of some sort of tragic event and the way adults cope. “But we’re alright/ We’re okay/ I tell myself/ We’ll find a way/ The sun will burn away the night/ Wait til May with me tonight.” I wonder if it’s about the Boston Marathon bombing. Hayley Sabella sings on this one as well. I feel like I’ve heard “One More Night” before, even though I haven’t. It has that kind of epic rock sound like The Band or Creedence Clearwater Revival. “I’ve got a chip as big as Brooklyn/ On my shoulder/ I don’t want to hear/ There’s more to life than this/ Next week I’ll pick myself up by my bootstraps/ But tonight/ I’m full of vinegar and piss.”
There is a lot of heart in this CD, culminating in “Around These Parts”: “Dear Katie/ I’m settling in/ Winter’s here and I’m probably drinking/ More than one man should when he’s alone/ Come spring I’ll be hard to find/ I’m moving ’cross the Canadian side and I’m never coming home/ Around these parts I call home.” This album moves along with ardent vocals and guitar playing, telling stories of human life. (Kimmy Sophia Brown)