Freakwater
End Time
Thrill Jockey
Somewhere along the way, Freakwater gained a reputation as one of the "stranger" entries in the new breed of alternative country. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Maybe lazy listeners put too much stock in the name. Granted,"freakwater"
conjures up all sorts of images: lonely backroads lined with dangerous
recluses, swampy bogfuls of many-headed beasts. You can just hear some
fresh-faced kid saying, "You'll never guess what I saw out driving out by
the freakwater last night. It was after midnight, and I got me a flat tire,
then all the sudden out of the forest came this . . ."
But I think Freakwater's reputation as musical oddballs goes beyond just
the name, and to me that's what is disturbing. To many, perhaps most,
listeners, Freakwater sounds strange because it's real country music. The
tunes on contemporary country radio -- the glossy anthems that inspire
many an anti-country tirade -- are only a very narrow sliver in the history
of this rich and varied genre. Most country music is scarred by dissonance,
steeped in a certain melancholy sound, rough-hewn like a farmhouse floor.
It's rugged and lonely, and sometimes, when skilled singers hit those high,
jagged harmonies, utterly transcendent. Just like Freakwater.
I'll tell people to run out and buy Freakwater's latest, End Time,
not to see how weird country music can get, but how great it can be when it
gets in touch with authentic roots. That's not to say Freakwater plays it
entirely by the book. End Time has more double-clutch tempo changes
than country music ever has, and the band really does play up the dissonant
side of the songs beyond what most traditional practitioners would dare to
do. "Cloak of Frogs" feels more like an avant-garde classical suite
executed with country instrumentation than a C&W song, and the entire album
has a quiet intensity that belies its ties to the indie rock world. "Just
Like You" has an almost jazz-like quality, with a soft but bumpy melody
that never goes quite where you expect. Perhaps most remarkably, this
extended cast of players manages to coax new sounds out of even the most
traditional instruments -- mandolin, dobro, fiddle, pedal steel.
But I can't find anything unusual about songs like "Cheap Watch" -- except
that Freakwater has managed to write a great old-time fiddle tune just
before the turn of the milenium. Similarly, "Sick, Sick, Sick" is a nice
bit of slide-guitar blues reminiscent of Lucinda Williams' first record.
These are great songs that become even greater when juxtaposed with some of
Freakwater's more challenging sounds.
It's understandable that End Time might sound, well, a bit foreign
if you're unfamiliar with where country music came from. But Freakwater
never set out to sound weird for the sake of being weird. Their experiment
is far more sophisticated -- taking the best of the old and infusing it
with the sounds you might hear late at night, all alone, out on the banks
of the freakwater.
-- Chris Powell-Schwartz
schwartz@outersound.com
