Tim Carroll – Rock & Roll Band
Five years with his band the Blue Chieftains yielded Tim Carroll a decent amount of good press but only a couple Diesel Only singles and compilation appearances. Carroll’s post-Chieftains solo years have seen the release of one affable EP on the Swedish label Sound Asleep, two compilation contributions, and a name-check as one of Nashville’s few worthies in Robbie Fulks’ anti-mash letter “Fuck This Town”. (This acknowledgment came about a year after Fulks had led off his debut disc, Country Love Songs, with a cover of Carroll’s alt-country anthem “Every Kind Of Music But Country”.)
So, after ten years, the release of the 14-song Rock & Roll Band instantly doubles Carroll’s recorded output, and almost everything on the album is worth the wait (the generically bluesy rocker “I’m In Pieces” being the one exception). The album-opening “The House That Ruth Tore Down” showcases his knack for tweaking a phrase without quite eliciting groans. “After The Hurricane” finds an infectious spirit in its simplicity, kind of like Nick Lowe playing in a Nashville dive circa 1980.
The best tunes are the tearful twins “When She Wants To Cry” and “A Good Cry”, a rootsy mid-album pair that look twangward for inspiration, both musically and lyrically (“I’m not really gonna need a shrink/When I have George Jones to help me think,” declares the latter). And the slinky, be-careful-what-you-ask-for “Girl That’s Hip” is in the unusual position of having appeared on two other albums in the past year: co-author Duane Jarvis’ underrated Far From Perfect, and the equally unheralded Hush Money from Victor Mecyssne.