Bottleneck – Late Nights, Early Mornings
There’s nothing wrong with Bottleneck that an injection of attitude wouldn’t fix. On its sophomore album, Late Nights, Early Mornings, the Vancouver quartet seems determined to make sure it doesn’t wake up the neighbors. That low-key approach yields moments of undeniable beauty, as when Robyn Carrigan, one of Bottleneck’s two singer-songwriters, shares a cigarette with the ghost of Patsy Cline on the torchy “Am I Blue?” Her bandmate Scott Smith, meanwhile, delivers gold with the album’s somber, lap-steel-swept title track; anyone who’s ever been in a dying relationship will wince at the song’s opening lines, “It’s 3 in the morning, and you wanna talk/I’ll be calling in sick, I guess, because I can’t make you stop.”
Despite such standouts, this thirteen-track release is sorely lacking in edginess. The playing is professional, and the album pleasant enough, but there’s something bland about Bottleneck’s blend of festival-circuit folk and soft-favorites country. Worse, Carrigan tends to take her vocal cues from albums such as Joni Mitchell Sings Songs Only Dogs Can Hear. Smith fares a bit better, but his contributions all too often end up sounding like Lyle Lovett without the desert-dry wit.
Still, the long-suffering unfortunates stupid enough to live beside you will love Bottleneck simply for not being the Supersuckers, proving what Carrigan and Smith probably know: Some of us can do without the attitude.