After my tour de force performance writing about the simple joys of cock rock, I had my suspicions that no one would ever again take me seriously as a music critic. To remedy this, I decided that my only hope was to play it straight for a few reviews in order to regain the public trust. I needed to find something that was a). actually good and b). not already all over the internets.
It is with this in mind that I gleefully present you with Aaron Schroeder.
His second CD, Black & Gold is available at all the usual places (iTMS, Amazon, CD Baby) and, presumably as an homage to this fantastic tune from the disc, he is having a CD release party this Friday at the Red Room in Kennewick, WA. Which, it seems, it about a six hour drive from just about everywhere, so I'm sure he'll forgive you if you don't make it.
His music is a heady dose of folk rock with just a dash of Belle And Sebastian. The resemblance is strongest in "If You Please" which you'll swear is "White Collar Boy" until the singing starts. This close brush with his roots is an anomaly though, and there is plenty of the young Mr. Schroeder in the rest of the tracks. 'Backwoods Child" is brimming with a rapture which is altogether too hard to find in an age of crybabies and nonchalant hipsters.
Don't let this song be the entire measure of his songwriting, though. At the other end of the spectrum, we have a track which is destined for this year's award for "Best Use Of A Honky-Tonk Piano In An Indie Rock Song". "Cold Country" has all the elements of a successful drinking song: off key singing in the background, a melody best left for drunken caterwauling, and the sound of breaking bottles as accompaniment.
While I'm on the subject of good songs for singing after too much alcohol, I may as well throw in Alastair Moock's "Nothing In This World". Between the two of these, you should have enough goofy, booze-fueled karaoke material to close out this labor day weekend:
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But I digress. You can hear my favorite track off the album, "Call Out To Me" at Aaron's myspace page, and I can happily tell you, "Yes, the whole album is this good."