Artist: Brent Best
Album: Your Dog, Champ
Bitrate: 244kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: Last Chance Records
Genre: Rock
Size: 95.89 megs
PlayTime: 0h 52min 18sec total
Rip Date: 2015-09-18
Store Date: 2015-09-07
Track List:
--------
01. Daddy Was A Liar 4:12
02. Good Man Now 4:22
03. You Shouldn't Worry 4:16
04. Aunt Ramona 5:38
05. Queen Bee 4:34
06. Travel, Again 2:49
07. Robert Cole 6:42
08. Career Day 4:21
09. Tangled 5:24
10. Clotine 5:25
11. It Is You 4:35
Release Notes:
--------
In a lengthy letter to his fans, Brent Best explains why it took him five years
to complete his solo album. He reflects on the hard times and real life shit
that led to his project, as well as others, being moved to the backburner. He
recounts too many different circumstances to talk about in this review, but in
listening to his new record Your Dog, Champ there is one striking takeaway: it
was worth the wait.
Not exactly a household name, Brent Best is best known as the frontman of
gloriously rowdy and criminally underrated Texas country-rockers Slobberbone.
After about twenty years together, the band called it quits in 2004 but never
really meant it, as they have continued to play shows and release albums. On his
solo album, Best taps into something deeper and more personal than the
beer-soaked rock and roll bliss of Slobberbone and his other band The Drams.
Champ finds Best taking on the role of storyteller, a skill he clearly has the
knack for based on the praise he has received from the likes of James McMurtry,
Will Johnson of Centro-matic, and the Drive-By TruckersÆ Patterson Hood. Best
can hold his own alongside those titans of songwriting.
Across the eleven songs on the album, he clings to the Southern Gothic
tradition, adding his own dusty Texas twang to songs that focus on rugged
characters and the misfortunes that come with a life lived hard. Family plays a
lead role, as opening song ôDaddy Was A Liarö contrasts uplifting vocals and
piano with lyrics about a deadbeat dad, only to be followed up by ôGood Man
Nowö, a sweeping, steel guitar-tinged song about murdering dad by literally
nailing him to the bed. Throughout the album, Best manages to juxtapose his
tales of murder and misdoing with a soundtrack of rich, grandiose instrumentals
that seem to offer a sort of musical redemption to the rough stories being told.
In the literary tradition of novelists like Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy,
Best manages to bring a very human element to even the most tragic, unforgivable
characters. But Champ is not all doom and gloom; more tender fare comes on the
rambling, fiddle-driven ôYou ShouldnÆt Worryö, ôQueen Beeö, and the worldly love
song ôIt Is Youö, the latter of which closes the album and features some of its
finest guitar picking and harmonica playing. The album and its characters jump
back and forth between lifeÆs most brutal moments to snapshots of pure
happiness.
Brent Best is an artist who will find fans in those that love acts like the
Drive-By Truckers and Lucero, and also in anyone who appreciates a strong
storyteller unafraid to write about the dark realities that plague rural life
across America. Make no mistake about it, much of these songs are grim as hell.
Yet, they are not filled with the kind of complete and utter hopelessness that
could make this album a total downer. There is a light at the end of the tunnel
and always a chance to make things right. If Slobberbone is a band to knock back
shots and beers with the boys to, then Brent BestÆs solo album is for sitting
back with whiskey on ice and soaking in the nuances of a life lived. HereÆs to
hoping it doesnÆt take another five years for Best to give us another solo
album.