When Soft Meets Rock With Just the Right Touch of Country

I am always amazed when a sleeper comes along, and Farewell Milwaukee’s FM may be one of the best sleepers I have ever heard. To explain, a sleeper is an album coming out of nowhere and pretty much ignored by radio and press and, in this case, probably the social media as well, but clonks you on the head by the fifth or tenth listen and jumps to the top of your favorites list. These guys did just that, sounding good in a nothing-new way the first couple of times through before clubbing me into submission with some of the best soft rock I have heard in many years. Perhaps I was thrown for a loop when track two, “Figure You Out,” came on like one of those one-hit wonders back in the late-sixties (think Vanity Fare’s “Hitchin’ a Ride” or Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)”), an anomaly on an album of truly exceptional smooth-rocking songs, but it didn’t take me long to, erm, figure it out. God, I slay me.

The key, I am finding, is in the songwriting (and the production and the arrangements and the performances, but mostly the songwriting).  Frontman Ben Lubeck came up with a string of songs to make the best soingwriters envious and the one supplied by fellow Fareweller Joey Ryan is a gem.  When you have songs this good, it is hard to fail.  Craig Fuller wrote like Lubeck and Ryan as did Scott Boyer and Tommy Talton and a small handful of favorites over the years.  These are outstanding songs, handed to us in all of their simplicity.  At times they are spine-tingling beautiful.

The truth is that this album carries me back to some of my best days in the late-sixties and early-seventies when bands like Cowboy and Pure Prairie League and Uncle Jim’s Music and even lesser favorites such as The Eagles and The Band were rearranging chromosomes. I came out of that era a dyed-in-the-wool hippie, a full-on supporter of the back-to-the-earth movement, the result of a one-year-nine-month-four-days-four-hours-and-thirty-five-minute sentence at the hands of the draft board. I went in scared shitless and came out just shitless and dove from the high board to bury myself in music just to block out the real world. It worked emotionally but pretty much took me off any career path I may have had. I ended up a bum of sorts, bouncing from record store to record store, always in search of that album which struck deep and made me feel, because I was convinced that the truth lay in being down because that was when I saw and thought best.  

I was looking for albums like FM, truth be told, for while I am totally up on it musically, it brings out emotions I feel all too seldom and makes me want to walk away from this world we as a species have created. On the whole, man has failed as a social animal, but I hold back hope because individually we can make a difference, no matter how slight. This album reminds me of the power of music. At least, it reminds of the power it has over me.

Unfortunately, this site does not allow embeds from Bandcamp and that is the only place I have been able to find full tracks from this album. If you want to hear how good these guys are, just click the links below.  

https://farewellmilwaukee.bandcamp.com/track/poison-rain

https://farewellmilwaukee.bandcamp.com/track/the-blister-and-the-palm

By the way, they have four other albums/EPs I will be checking out as well. I don’t know how I missed them but I sometimes think there are forces out there keeping me from finding the really good stuff.

A bonus:  from an earlier album.