3 keepers
keeper avg .250
The result of their week-long residency in Dallas, the first The Grand Theatre album starts with a couple throw-backs to 80's bar bands, the strutting title song and the gleefully punchy "Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You)," before hard-stressing the country in alt-country in the amphetamine hoedown "The Magician" and cowboy western "You Were Born to Be in Battle," which heavily borrows lyrical theme and crooning vocal delivery from Johnny Cash. The album gets much more interesting in middle, starting with the energetic "The Dance Class" ("I am in love with whoever you are"), followed by the surprisingly intimate "Let the Whiskey Take the Reins"****; strange that a such a quiet track where Ken Bethea's prominent, melodic leads counterpoint Rhett Miller's nearly whispered vocal was picked from a mostly rocking repertoire of live performances. In contrast is the goofy "Champaign, Illinois"****, which resembles a rocked-up "Desolation Row" (Bob Dylan); it's hardly profound but like me I guess the lively but backwater cow/college-town where I spent 5 years made some impression on Miller as a good place to be down-and-out. Elsewhere side 2 is kind of a mirror image of side 1, with "You Smoke Too Much"****, another new wave rocker similar to INXS's "Mystify" (this one is the better one), another hoedown, the frantic "A State Of Texas," an overdone, half-baked five and a half minute country-rock double entendre "Please Hold on While the Train is Moving", (which lifts lyrics from two great classic rock songs, "Helter Skelter" and "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", throws in a half-time bridge, and still says nothing clever), and closing with another plaintive sigh of a song, "The Beauty Marks." Regardless of this repetition there's enough stylistic variation to keep things interesting, so eight albums in they're not outta juice.
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