Cousin Lovers – Your Therefore Experience
The opening track on Your Therefore Experience begins with a line that addresses an unexamined fear in the world of country music: the fear of sounding like Pavement, indie-rock superstars.
Los Angeles band the Cousin Lovers, like those frisky Pavement boys, are quite clever lyrically, but musically there is nothing lo-fi going on here: The band performs a raucous mix of bluegrass, traditional country and rock. Tim Ferguson’s vocals are a perfect fit for the humor and heart that fills these songs.
The three live tracks “That’s Why God Made You”, “Brummy And Highball”, and “Night Of The Hunter” have enough high-speed jammin’ to turn Charlie Daniels wild again. But the Cousin Lovers also succeed with slow songs such as the funny/sad “Waltz” and “Here’s To The Horseplayers”, a song that the late gutter poet Charles Bukowski would have certainly appreciated.
On the final track, the haunting and beautiful “13 Stars”, the band members put down their instruments in favor of some a cappella harmonizing that’s as powerful and sizzling as any of their most ferocious picking.