There's just such a feel-good air about every one of the songs on the album, and each stands on its own as much as being one part of a fluid record. "The Trench" is tailor-made for a southern barroom sing-along Ragan strums at a deliberate pace and when the scruffy vocals aren't filling the space, Gaunt's busy violin playing keeps everything moving. While the emotion is one of Ragan's major strengths, another is the variance in tempos and styles on the record. When Ragan belts out " Our days are numbered surely, this breath will soon be passive / Just as the wind in the mountains, carries the dust of the wanted" and leads the song to its finish, there's no doubt that he's a man who puts every bit of heart and soul into his music. It's in the up-tempo acoustic strumming, in the strings courtesy of violinist Jon Gaunt and the gripping way in which Ragan sings. That's not to say Ragan bites Spingsteen's style - that's far from the case - but the similarities are there in all the best possible ways. Ragan plays to his strengths immediately in the uplifting "Glory," a violin-and-percussion-assisted track that sounds every bit like it could have been written by Bruce Springsteen. It's moving and it's captivating and it's everything one could ask for in an album. And I know that "country music" is a dirty phrase to most, but Gold Country is just that. Ragan's gruff baritone is firmly rooted in the American heartland. Something about it is truly special in a way that most other singer-songwriters can't even hope to understand. But something about Ragan's solo material is different. I've followed them since No Division and I celebrate their entire catalog. It'll probably be considered heresy to say, but when I first heard Chuck Ragan's Feast or Famine - specifically "The Boat" - all I could think was "this is what he should have been doing all along."ĭon't get me wrong I love Hot Water Music.
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