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Album Reviews Youthful, loud and wise beyond their years

IAN SINCLAIR reviews albums by Adam's House Cat, Dawn Landes and Frontperson

Adam’s House Cat
Town Burned Down
(ATO Records)
★★★★

RECORDED in 1990, Town Burned Down by Adam’s House Cat — Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s first band on their way to forming Southern Rock legends Drive-By Truckers — now gets its official release.

Remixed by David Barbe with Hood writing all the lyrics and re-recording the vocals, it’s a hard-rocking, raw and urgent album.

The seeds of the Truckers’ recognisable sound are already baked into the music — from searing guitar licks (the AC/DC-sounding Child Abuse) to small town blues (6 O’Clock Train) to incisive character sketches.

“Do you still take yourself seriously?/Do you still try to act so mysteriously?” sings Hood about an individual who “damn near institutionalised” the protagonist of Long Time Gone.

Youthful, loud and wise beyond its years, Town Burned Down is a lost alt-country masterpiece to file alongside the best of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt.

Dawn Landes
Meet Me At The River
(Yep Roc)
★★★★

LOOKING for some magical Nashville “authenticity” for her fifth long player, New York City-based singer songwriter Dawn Landes teamed up with the legendary country producer Fred Foster, who's worked with Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson.

He sent her to “study the Hanks” – songwriters Hank Williams and Hank Cochran – and Landes took inspiration too from Parton and Lucinda Williams.

Accordingly, the record oozes with brilliantly catchy country-soul tunes that hark back to the classics of the genre – check out the amusing ad-libbed I Don’t Dance featuring country icon Bobby Bare.

Why They Name Whiskey After Men is a wry tale of heartbreak (“It comes on strong and keeps you warm before it starts to do you in,”) while the restless Traveling finds the narrator leaving the Big Apple, passing Graceland on the way to New Orleans, listening to Dr John.

Outstanding.

Frontperson
Frontrunner
(Oscar St Records)
★★★

FRONTPERSON is the new project from Canadian musicians and songwriters Kathryn Calder, vocalist and keyboard player in The New Pornographers, and Mark Andrew Hamilton, aka Woodpigeon.

Having worked on the tracks by sending them back and forth between Montreal and Vancouver Island, the duo recorded at the National Music Centre in Calgary, where they had access to a plethora of keyboards including mellotrons, orchestrons, optigans and the world’s first commercially produced synthesiser.

This is a bit of a red herring though. The music is not dominated by these instruments — instead, the album is full comforting, folk-tinged indie rock, from the delightful duet Tick-Tock (Frontrunner) to Calder’s heavenly voice on single Young Love. According to Hamilton the songs cover “inner violence, desire, cruising, and new crushes.”

There's nothing spectacular here, just listenable tunes that could be the start of something wonderful.

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