Photo of Michigan Rattlers by Shelby Goldstein
Drinkin’ Beer on the back porch. A lazy acoustic guitar perched on the aged-mahogany rocking chair screaming at you to play. The sun just about to enter the caramel gold of nostalgia. That’s what Michigan Rattlers’ self-titled EP feels like.
Michigan Rattlers
Recorded in a live setting, the Rattlers’ country rock permeates the music like thick molasses and slithers over you as Graham Young’s bright sweet guitars sing their sympathetic resonator drawl. Drums move with the forward motion of inexorable time; and Adam Reed’s Bass holds that tight low range, with a nice thump-thump of a pickup’s chugging engine. It awakens nostalgic longing for simplicity.
The energy of the music carries the narratives, reminiscent of redneck-laureates Drive-By Truckers on their Southern rock opera albums about those people we look at and forget instantly. Young’s not-quite-finished wood carved voice rustles with the rhythmic lull of a storyteller at a campfire. It’s a feeling of powerful comfort. Tracks like “Strain of Cancer” and “Sweet Diane” hit that spot in me like those sweet southern girls I’d ogle at camp in my youth.
Recorded in a live setting, the Rattlers’ country rock permeates the music like thick molasses and slithers over you
If I have any complaints, they lie in the sameness of the songs. The dynamic element of country and folk is in the stories and the way they move, not the music, so this EP is perhaps not in my wheelhouse per sé.
For what these guys want to accomplish with the 15-minute EP, they succeed. It’s is like a fountain soda: a sweet, to-the-point EP that takes you on a few journeys, letting you watch as they wind down despair, and hope, and hate and love. I got the guitar, now all I need is a beer, a back porch, and boom box so I can watch the sunset and enjoy.
Until I dance under the streetlight,
6,580 Rawckus Kung Fu Throwing Stars out of 10,000
