Of the half-dozen records the Old 97’s have made over the past decade, “Drag It Up is our most personal,” guitarist Ken Bethea writes in a brief band biography that accompanied press mailings of the group’s new disc. He’s right on target in his assessment; that much is obvious simply from the inclusion of “Coahuila”, which features a lead vocal from Bethea — his first-ever in the band’s recorded output.
“Coahuila” is a goofy, almost amateurish little ditty, kicking off with the outlandishly mundane lyric, “I turn my microwave on and I cook my chicken ravioli.” It’s the kind of number that, in the height of the band’s brass-ring pursuits during their major-label days with Elektra Records, would’ve been laughed right out of the boardroom.
And yet, there’s something effortlessly, infectiously fun about the track. As Bethea warbles along, only occasionally on-key, about a little brown-haired border girl, with drummer Philip Peeples’ Tex-Mex rhythm bouncing along for the ride, it’s hard not to just…smile. This is the sound of a band that doesn’t have to try so hard anymore, and is content to simply be themselves.
Drag It Up is also very much the sound of the Old 97’s as established many moons ago, Bethea’s surprise vocal turn notwithstanding. Much of the album is vintage 97’s; when Bethea’s big fat guitar twang introduces the album’s first song (“Won’t Be Home No More”) and charges straight into Peeples’ chucka-chucka trainbeat, we’re right back on the same track that sent us such staples as “Victoria” and “House That Used To Be”.
Similarly reassuring to the band’s longtime fan base are such songs as “The New Kid”, a midtempo rocker built on carefully clever wordplay (“He’s got the goods but he’s no good for his word”), and “Friends Forever”, a rapid-fire pop anthem in the vein of “Let The Idiot Speak” that champions those cast aside from the high-school “in” crowd (“Went out for the football team/Found out the hard way you can’t live your dad’s dream”).
But the 97’s also show themselves to be much more at ease with expressing subtler sentiments. In their late-’90s heyday, it sometimes seemed a struggle for them to balance their gift for gorgeous melody with their gravitation toward restless energy; too often the surging intensity steamrolled the precious beauty of their material.
On Drag It Up, it doesn’t appear to have bothered them that at least half the record is subdued in tone and tempo. If the overall result isn’t quite as rawk, well, the sound suits the songs, and that makes all the difference.
Some of this shift may be partly attributable to frontman Rhett Miller’s recent stab at a solo career. Though his 2002 disc The Instigator wasn’t any kind of commercial breakthrough, it did underline his talent as a pop tunesmith, and that facet of his artistry seems to have been encouraged here. “Moonlight”, “Blinding Sheets Of Rain” and “Adelaide” are prime examples; they’re instantly catchy numbers that don’t even try to rock, because they don’t need to. Instead, the band lends just the right light touch behind Miller’s sweetly engaging croon, letting the tune carry the day.
In a somewhat different vein is “Valium Waltz”, which finds the 97’s turning ever so slightly in a psychedelic direction. On the one hand, it’s a simple three-quarter-time ballad about “the daughter of the mayor of Marble Falls,” but rather than play it straight, they’ve twisted the tone toward the tripped-out drag of the substance in the song’s title. This is new territory for the 97’s, and suggests they’re interested not just in revisiting their past, but in reinventing their future.
That becomes even clearer on the following track, “In The Satellite Rides A Star”. Together, the two songs anchor the middle of the record with a mesmerizing spell that brings to mind the melancholy mood-music of Mark Kozelek or Mojave 3 far more than the trusty twang upon which the Old 97’s built their name.
One suspects “In The Satellite Rides A Star” was initially written for the group’s previous album, since that album was titled Satellite Rides. It might not have fit quite right on that disc, which Bethea’s band bio more or less accurately describes as “a bouncy rock and roll record”. But the song is well-suited to the more eclectic and personal persuasion of Drag It Up.
What’s really remarkable about “In The Satellite Rides A Star”, though, is that the lead vocal is delivered not by Miller but by bassist Murry Hammond. This isn’t particularly unusual at first blush, as Hammond has typically taken a lead turn or two on the group’s albums; he also steps out front here on “Smokers”, an intriguingly rhythmic if ultimately forgettable number toward the front of the disc.
But “In The Satellite Rides The Star” is different, because it is, without question, the most affecting and arresting vocal performance on the album. The lyric is elusive, impressionistic: “I got your number, I know who you are/You’re a satellite on the world,” Hammond sings, hinting in that line and others what he’s talking about but never quite coming right out and saying it.
No matter, the spirit of the song is clear when he and Miller sing together in the simple, straightforward chorus: “And I feel it slowing down.” We don’t need to understand anymore; we feel it, just as they do.
