It's a record for drama queens. Though his songs may have swapped bleeding hearts for bloodied corpses, indiscretion for mortal sin, and lovesickness for whatever fatal disease is doing the rounds, Dan John Miller uses such moments of misery as metaphors for his own state of mind. From the lurching paranoia of "Superstition" to the smashed-glass attack on vanity in "Garbage Picker", the amount of melodrama and woe-is-me fatalism displayed through the lyrics paints the image of a man out of place; unable to bear with the brutal pace of modern life.
Of course, this could all just be tailored to fit the band's sound. Sharing the same ground as fellow mudslingers Giant Sand, The Handsome Family and Violent Femmes, the debut album by Detroit doomsayers Blanche trains the weeping slide guitars, brash banjo and twanged Appalachian melodies of trad-country into yet another imitation of the much-abused "Southern Gothic" sound. But while it's an admirable attempt at capturing the threadbare line between contentment and catastrophe, these twelve barbed fits of fear and hate don't quite hit the mark.
Perhaps the problem lies in the band's adherence to such a tired formula. On the mid-pace duet "Do You Trust Me?," the same three-chord strum, swinging-pendulum bassline and straight-laced, derivative melody fail to make Blanche any more distinctive than the raft of alt. acts that thieve the traditions and folklore of Americana to give their sound some kind of perceived "edge." It doesn't help that the song's moral of jealousy and trust revolves around a tiresome indecision that's punctuated by Miller's rampant paranoia.
The production, tackled mostly by His Name Is Alive's Warren Defever, also sounds largely unimpressive. In his recordings, Defever concentrates on capturing Miller's voice at its most possessed; ignoring an underlying tenderness in his affected southern drawl. At the same time, he leaves the guitars sounding thrashed, brittle and smothered in sandpaper. When Brendan Benson and David Feeny take the reigns on "Who's to Say" and "So Long Cruel World", the band's sound is subtler, allowing each instrument the breathing space to make its contribution, rather than relying on coarse production. Their work also makes the most of Miller's voice, as it teeters from deranged and demon-like on "Cruel World", to handsome and sincere on the likes of "Bluebird".
There are other moments to admire in this record. The closing "Someday" is split into two sketches of roughly recorded bluegrass; one a fevered, flushed strum of strained vocals, and the latter a transistor-radio lullaby filtered through an effects device to sound like a lost 50s country record. A point where Warn Defever's production does succeed is on the jumble of lumbered rhythm and squealing slide guitar of "Jack on Fire", as Tracee Miller's promise to "fuck you until you die, bury you in kisses" tramples the line between romance and masochism to chilling effect.
While Blanche are not yet at the stage where they can craft a challenging and consistent record, their mastery of the country music form, their emotional complexity and their lyrical intelligence are all signposts to suggest that it's within them. All they need to do is become less tied down to conventions, strip back on the drama, and refocus their themes on something that's more real. After all, that's where the true drama lies.
