Artist: Ryan Bingham
Album: Tomorrowland
Bitrate: 247kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: Axster Bingham Records
Genre: Rock
Size: 116.21 megs
PlayTime: 1h 02min 38sec total
Rip Date: 2012-09-21
Store Date: 2012-09-18
Track List:
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01. Beg For Broken Legs 4:15
02. Western Shore 6:02
03. Flower Bomb 4:07
04. Guess Who's Knocking 4:03
05. Heart Of Rhythm 3:35
06. I Heard 'Em Say 4:01
07. Rising Of The Ghetto 8:07
08. No Help From God 6:41
09. Keep It Together 4:31
10. Never Far Behind 6:11
11. The Road I'm On 2:21
12. Neverending Show 4:59
13. Too Deep To Fill 3:45
Release Notes:
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Ryan Bingham tells the economically busted, morally bankrupt world to go fuck
itselfà
When I sat down to review Ryan BinghamÆs newest album, Tomorrowland, I took the
usual precautions: I threw back a shot of Jose Cuervo and mentally prepared to
walk down a desolate lyrical landscape of seared animal skulls, dust bowls and
vultures tearing apart the splayed guts of putrescence.
IÆve listened to Ryan Bingham over the years for the same reason I read Cormac
McCarthy or watch Wim Wenders movies: for the catharsis, to sit still in a
symphonic sweat lodge where your darkest demons are absorbed into every pore and
oozed back out in an ammonic afterglow.
ThatÆs what I knew of Ryan Bingham. The New Mexico-born bull rider turned
troubadour, turned gravely-voiced genius who rocketed to international fame in
2010 after winning a bazillion awardsùfrom a Golden Globe to an Oscarùfor best
original song with Crazy HeartÆs ôThe Weary Kind.ö
ThatÆs what I KNEW of Ryan Bingham. But when I pressed play on Tomorrowland,
that is not what I got. What I got was so much more.
Tomorrowland is BinghamÆs fourth studio album, but itÆs his first self-produced
one. Here, Bingham cuts ties with the Lost Highway label and Dead Horses band of
yore and forms his own indie companyùAxster Bingham Records, with his wife. ItÆs
a fitting back-story, because thematically, Tomorrowland is like a good, olÆ
fashioned rock anthem of kiss-my-asschaps autonomy.
Tomorrowland is Bingham writing his own story, on his own terms. Count on the
classics: dusty vocals and heart worn themes of suffering, economic strife,
homelessness, and hopelessness. On track three, ôFlower Bomb,ö Bingham wails,
ôThey tell us up in heaven there is food to eat/ But for now all we get is this
shit on the street.ö
And track seven, ôRising of the Ghetto,ö is an eight-plus minute, ever-ascending
ballad befitting Bruce SpringsteenÆs heartland rock. But unlike the lumbering
ache of songs that Mescalito (2007) gave us, here Bingham isùwhile not
necessarily upbeatùup-tempo. On Tomorrowland in general, Bingham is less
acoustic, more electric; less woebegone, more willful; less Anton Chigurh and
more Butch Cassidy.
On the second track, ôWestern Shore,ö Bingham sings: ôYou gotta heal your heart
so you can live again another day, live out loud with no one to fear.ö And on
ôGuess WhoÆs Knocking,ö Bingham lays down a railing amp-driven riff that calls
to mind the White StripesÆ Icky Thump. ôGuess whoÆs knocking on the door?ö
Bingham dares. ôItÆs me motherfucker, IÆm knockÆn on the door.ö
IÆll say one thingÆs for sure: Tomorrowlandùthe album and the red-blooded,
rattlesnake-eating rebellious attitudeùis no place for the weary kind.