ALBUM REVIEW: Ian Noe Brings ‘River Fools & Mountain Saints’ Vividly to Life
Rachel Cholst
Posted On March 23, 2022
Whether or not you’ve been traveling these days, Ian Noe’s River Fools & Mountain Saints will transport you to a mythic view of Eastern Kentucky. The album came to Noe before the songs were even written. With each side devoted to river fools and mountain saints, respectively, Noe constructs a world of loss, desperation, and creative perseverance against the odds.
“Pine Grove (Madhouse)” launches the album with a jaunty groove set to bittersweet lyrics. The song serves as a sort of overture for the album, juxtaposing tales of wild parties with melancholy character sketches and ominous tales of danger and evil in the backwoods.
Meanwhile, “Strip Job Blues 1984” serves as an ode to the region’s ubiquitous coal miners and their death-defying feats. The song is contemplative and wistful, though the group vocals in the chorus make it feel like a work song. One can easily imagine humming it under their breath while setting charges in the dark.
Though Noe has drawn comparisons to Dylan — and they are just, given his lyrical density and free-wheeling vocal rasp — the song “Tom Barrett” calls to mind Cory Branan’s sharp eye for down-and-out characters. Barrett presents a more somber response to Warren Zevon’s illustration of the eternal soldier; he’s resigned to excelling at one thing only, at the expense of the rest of his life.
Noe and his band show off their versatility with the sludgy Delta rock of “POW Blues.” In spite of Noe’s bone-chilling description of life in a POW camp, the song itself has a raunchy feel, recalling the river honky-tonks the narrator longs for. Given the sparse storytelling in the rest of the album, “POW Blues” stands out as a space for Noe’s talented band to spread its wings.
River Fools & Mountain Saints doesn’t want you to pity its inhabitants. Instead, it wants to celebrate the way people learn how to handle rough living, the way we search for dignity no matter what. Rather than pity, River Fools asks us to float alongside these folks for just a little while, and see if maybe we can learn something along the way.
