Gordy the moose reviews some of his favourite new submissions to the Roots Music Canada virtual mailbox.
For a guy who calls his band the Disappointments, Danny Bell has yet to actually disappoint me.
The accordion-playing folk-punk singer-songwriter and musical hero of working class northern industrial towns is back with a new collection of songs that once again captures the harder edges of blue-collar life as well as the tender and the absurd. It also showcases Danny’s creativity like never before.
The accordion’s still up front, but a lot of the arrangements have a country twang and some super trippy eclectic guitar effects – perhaps even some straight-up electronic elements – like on “Amateurs” and “Overpass.”
“2003 Hatchback” is a waltz that features pedal steel that sounds almost theremin-like in places.
And then there’s “Interlude Cowboy Poem,” a performance art-like riff on spoken country songs such as Kris Kristofferson’s “To Beat the Devil.” In this case, the song is really a collection of random non-sequiturs such as “Let’s make the window worth looking through” and “If your car’s on the fritz, get yourself a well-used Pontiac Vibe.”
The lyrics on this album strike me as more cryptic than on previous albums, and not just because the vocals blend into the mix more.
But a few of the topics are still easy to make out, such as with “Big Potatoes,” which makes fun of people showing off in big pickup trucks, and “Long Winter,” whose title is pretty self-explanatory.
The closer, “Good Deal, You Betcha,” which opens and closes with long stretches of nature sounds and bird songs, is basically a love song to life in the north.
For an album called Contemporary Accordion Music, this is probably the least-accordion-dominant record Danny’s made – but it’s certainly his most instrumentally and emotionally complex.
Check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
