Album review: CORB LUND – Cabin Fever
New West Records
This album slipped through the net but roots fans should still check it out. Canadian country singer Corb Lund’s ‘Cabin Fever’ is a left field album with a difference. It’s is full of wry, observational, insightful and occasionally humorous songs that draw on cowboy traditions, but are occasional extended to mirror the contemporary city/prairie divide.
Corb is perhaps best regarded as a post-modern cowboy, who saves his best observation for his web site when says; ‘The reality is we don’t live in that world anymore – yet the cowboys were kind of punk rockers in their day.”
Mixing introspection with natural song craft, Corb holed up in a cabin with time and drink on his hands – hence the album title – to search for meaning in his life, via cowboy narratives with a broader perspective than you might imagine.
Appearances are frequently deceptive on an album that levers you in on the opening ‘Getting Down On The Mountain’. An acoustic guitar and grungy bass underpins some wry lyrics about the social consequences of diminishing resources, in this case oil; ‘I think I see a rip in the social fabric, brother can you pass the amo’. It’s closely followed by the bluesy stomp of ‘Gravedigger’ and a Hayes Carll co-write and biblical road trip ‘Bible On The Dash’.
A big tremolo figure ushers in a country tinged love song ‘September’ that mirrors his cowboy/city background. The brief semi yodel is almost an emotive paean to his own experiences, as well as a fast disappearing lifestyle. He adds a far more expansive yodel on cleverly crafted ‘Priceless Antique Pistol Shoots Startled Owner’, but then surprises you with some urbane rockabilly on ‘The Gothest Girl I Can’, which is a sister track to the rocking biker song ‘Mein Deutsches Motorrad’; ‘I’m gonna get the gothest girl I can, Black lips and Betty Page bangs. Horned rimmed glasses and an ass that‘ll pass for a glimpse of the promised land.’
Corb Lund shifts between moods and feelings in the same way that he swaps literal meaning for irony and metaphor. He pops up with the wistful and ambivalently titled ‘One Left In The Chamber’ and he squeezes every last nuance from his songs on the stripped down ‘Cabin Side’ of disc 2. The self explanatory, pedal steel and twang led ‘Drink Like You Mean It’ is also reprised with a plucked banjo.
No country rocker would be complete without some western wing and he duly delivers on the humorous ‘Cows Around’; ‘Everything is better with some cows around. Living in town sometimes brings me down. You won’t know what you’re missing till you hear that sound. May you always have cows around’. He even adds some faux Elvis phrasing to list the different types of cows.
‘Cabin Fever’ has real substance, but you suspect that that the Canadian singer- songwriter might find it difficult to reach a potentially wider audience beyond die-hard country fans. *** (3/5)
Review by Pete Feenstra
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Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024
ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
S8NT ELEKTRIC XTC (Long Branch Records)
ARCANA KINGS Here We Go (Curtain Call Records)
KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)
Featured Albums w/c 11 November 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)
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