aaamusic | On 08, Oct 2011

Godammit punk singers of today, why must all of you take a sabbatical from your bands to make solo records that are indebted to the holy triumvirate of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen? It would be getting extremely old if it wasn’t for the fact that, more often than not, the results are staggering. For example, the British go to guy for this sort of thing, Frank Turner, is infiltrating the mainstream in a way that his old band, Million Dead, never could, and now we have front man of The Loved Ones, Dave Hause, in his first solo album trying his hand too. There are many, many great things about this album but one of the best things is that it takes an antiquated genre of music that seems to be en vogue in recent times, and makes it sound fresher than 95% of the what’s popular today. Hause isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, what he’s doing is throwing down the gauntlet to the multitude of others making noises like this and writing better songs than most of the groups involved could ever dream of, believe me, this record is heavily indebted to the holy triumvirate, Springsteen especially, but the songs on here make this a hell of a lot more than just a tribute record.

 

Take album opener Time Will Tell, this reviewer loathes the word “manly”, but he can’t think of any other way to describe it, this kind of soul searching that never descends into self pity is a rare breed, and if one doesn’t wholeheartedly believe in the redemptive power of rock and roll by the time the songs enormous, E Street Band indebted crescendo kicks in, then, and I hate to break this to you, but you have no soul, and that is what this album has in spades. In a way this record is like what Brian Fallon’s Horrible Crowe’s record should have sounded like but was too steeped in rock mythology to truly let itself go. This is a record that is all heart and no surface, and anyone who says that rock and roll is nothing without flashy gimmicks and artifice that gives the artist some over-inflated sense of self worth can unceremoniously go fuck themselves.

 

But it’s not all E Street Band rockers, Prague (Revive Me) is a prime cut of mandolin led gypsy folk, Years From Now is simultaneously widescreen yet shockingly intimate, bringing to mind, strangely enough, Joshua Tree era U2 in it’s cinematic organ and deeply personal lyrics. In total this is a beautiful album, as personal as it is stupendously huge, it shows a mercurially talented songwriter doing nothing but precisely what he wants to do, and I honestly can’t think of anything I’d rather here. If you, dear reader, are going to this years revival tour, get there early and worship at the altar of Philadelphia’s finest, Dave Hause.

 

Will Howard