No one knows better than the BoDeans that American bands have a way of sounding better on record with T Bone Burnett producing them. This is the third time the darlings of Waukesha, Wisconsin, have hooked up with him. But those looking for them to recapture the spark of their 1986 Burnett-produced debut Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, or reinvent themselves through his innovative studio effects, will be disappointed.
At its best, as on “The First Time” and “Hearing”, Still recalls the richness and bite of T Bone’s work with the Wallflowers. Organs swirl, guitars ring, and an overall urgency drives the tunes. But the production is one of Burnett’s most conservative; for all its texture and roominess, it can’t rescue the BoDeans from their worst instincts, and, with three different drummers, can’t project the chemistry of a band.
If founding BoDeans Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas once aligned themselves with the likes of the Everly Brothers and the Louvin Brothers with their striking vocal harmonies, and Buddy Holly with their freshness and vitality, they now seem to take their cues from old arena bands such as Journey and the Marshall Tucker Band. You can’t expect them to preserve the youthful urgency that once enabled them to sound at home on a punk/new-wave label. But singing of ghosts and dreams, heavy hearts and long nights, they sound a bit weary, weighed down by the past.
