Pinetops – Above Ground And Vertical
When Jimmie Dale Gilmore brought his Spinning Around The Sun tour to Carrboro, North Carolina, about five years ago, a young guy named Jeffrey Dean Foster opened the show. Introduced to Foster afterwards, I commented on how much I liked one song in particular, even reciting the chorus: “The blood runs thin when it’s hot outside/It runs right through your fingers/Well I don’t think there’s anything worse/Than a love that lingers.” Foster, seeming a bit surprised, responded how much it meant to a performer for someone to recall the words from a song, especially after hearing it just once. It’s been almost five years since that night, but I still remember the sincere appreciation Foster expressed, and if I hold my head at just the right angle, I can still hear that song.
Of course, now I can hear it through my speakers, because the long-overdue debut album from the Foster and his Winston-Salem band the Pinetops has been released, with “Linger” as its stirring highlight. Most of the Don Dixon-produced Above Ground And Vertical is as lean and graceful as a shortstop, but the twin guitars are ready to rear up when called upon, as in “Underneath Your Wheels” and the marvelous, True Believers-ish “Jesus Spoke To Me”. In general, the Pinetops fall between Neil Young (“Shotgun Baby” is loud Neil, while the piano-coaxed “Hello Down There” is mostly “After The Gold Rush” quiet) and Tom Petty at his Stonesiest. And, yes, that could make them Chuck Prophet’s slightly younger brothers.
But as good as the album sounds, Foster’s lyrics remain the more striking feature as he creates a place where doomed policemen wear their guns too low, angels circle like vultures, and “bad luck needs a good luck charm.” In other words, as Foster suggests in the brief but compelling “Lottery”, it never hurts to hope that Jesus and his daddy are in a good mood.