Quick Hits, Vol. 353 (Good Looks, Robert Earl Keen, The Decemberists, The Pollies)

Good Looks - Lived Here for a While.  Great little band and a good, tight album.  They came to ACL a year or two ago, if I recall they were a late addition to the poster.  Local dudes, and one of them almost died after a car accident of some sort.  Why am I trying to say all of this from memory?  Dope.  Here is what I found before: "And according to one article I read, one of them was hit by a car right after they released this album and played a gig at Hotel Vegas, putting in the hospital with terrible injuries and a Go Fund Me to help him pay for it all.  Damn!  I guess he is doing better now! The members of the band are from different smaller towns in Texas - and some of them met up and honed their skills at the Kerrville Folk Festival.  Singer Tyler Jordan claims it was seeing Spoon's ACL taping that cemented his need to move to Austin to make music.  That is cool."  And the opening track is a good Spoon comp - very much sounds like something the Spoon guys would have done.  "White Out" is another Spoon-ish song, that also has good lyrics about a gentrifying neighborhood.  The album opener is the top track with 255k streams - "If It's Gone" has the line that they named the album after.

I really want to go see this band play live.  Their sound is warm and yet still fun and catchy.  The whole album is really good, and I felt the same way about their first disc.  I hope these guys get a shot!

Robert Earl Keen - Western Chill.  Weird album.  Feels like one of those label compilations you used to get, where one hot artist would be on there so that you'd buy the disc, and then the rest of the album would be up-and-comers who the label was hoping would pop by being associated with the big guy.  That being said, I kind of like the relaxed and dorky meandering of the title song.  Singing about drinking beer (which he doesn't do anymore) in his cabin for one, or skinny-dipping with the sirens from Oh, Brother.  It won't enter his top songs compendium anytime soon, but it is pleasant anyway.  But after that song, you get one from Bill Whitbeck, and then a track from Brian Beken, then Kym Warner, etc.  Don't get me wrong, they are nice little Americana/country tunes, but they aren't REK.  The one that I really honestly enjoy a lot is the Irish breakdown stomper of Kym Warner's "Hello Stranger."  The stream numbers have to honestly hurt Keen's feelings a little bit.  I'm not going to add them all up, but I bet he doesn't have 350k streams total for all 14 of these tunes.  Jeez.  It is surprisingly not the top track, but I'm giving you the title song anyway.  42k streams.

Like I said, kinda dorky, but still fun.  The other tunes on here that feel like they are really just REK songs aren't better, but they have a similar vibe.  "Let's Valet" feels like he just came up with that idea to be a title for a song and spent twenty minutes coming up with words that rhymed.  Sort of the same for "Balmorhea," like he was thinking "I need to make a better song mentioning that cool little town than those damn Robison brothers, let's throw this sucker together."  You know what is weird?  Good Looks had a song on their first album called "Balmorhea."  Woahhhhhh.  I do love that spring fed pool out there.  Magical.  I don't think I need to save anything from this though.

The Decemberists - As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.  I like these guys a lot, but I frequently let them fall off of my radar.  When at their best, they sound like their music could be new stuff from R.E.M., which had been my favorite band for decades.  I actually had a discussion with someone at a show a few years ago about favorite bands, and their theory was that you can't name a defunct band as your favorite.  I don't know if I agree with that rule, but it has stuck in my brain since so that I know think of Stipe and Co. as a former favorite band.  Damn stranger-my-wife-struck-up-conversation-with!  So anyway, this album is very nice.  Starts off with a poppy little nugget of jangly 60's-tinged pop rock called "Burial Ground" that is the most streamed tune on here.  A sad 2.3 million streams.

The juxtaposition of lyrics about meeting at the burial ground while happy guitars and synths tangle around each other is great.  Is it about killing yourself at the graveyard?  Or about having a dance party at the graveyard?  Unclear, but it's snappy!  And the album goes for all sorts of feels - "William Fitzwilliam" has a country lilt; "The Reapers" is a classic Decemberists song with opaque lyrics about some vaguely historical-sounding event and eight or nine instruments bopping along; "Born to the Morning" sounds like The New Pornographers.  The problem is when you get to the final song, a 19 minute and twenty-one second meandering freakout container that should be shortened to two minutes or shot into the sun.  Or maybe split into four songs?  I dunno, just know that the entire thing is too much.  Good disc tho.

The Pollies - Transmissions.  Weird thing on the ACL poster this year.  I jammed The Pollies for a while, wrote them up, and was very excited about them showing up at the Festival.  Fuzzy rock and roll goodness right up my alley.  Only to realize that the poster actually said some other dude + The Pollies, so it ended up being like a soul thing instead, which I liked immensely less.  On the other hand, this disc is great stuff, reminds me a little of Ryan Adams.  I know we are not supposed to like Ryan Adams anymore, but I really liked a few of his albums.  Gold is great stuff.  Anyway, this is not him.  The only famous connection here is that one of the Alabama Shakes people is in this band.  Or was.  I don't recall anymore.  Anyway, no one listens to this album, and its their loss.  Top song is "Hold On My Heart," with 33k streams.

"Knocking At My Door" has a very annoying, very unnecessary sloppy freakout in the middle that just does nothing for me.  I really dislike it.  And as soon as it is over, you get back to a Ryan Adams-singing-over-Paul Westerberg-jangle tune and all is right with the world.  Overall, I liked it enough to add it to the queue as I listened to the ACL bands, and I think that still holds true.