Toronto's Deadly Snakes play scrappy, guitar-heavy garage-rock that belies a brash and collective love of shaky Delta blues, big American soul, and sweaty Detroit R&B.; So it hardly seems a surprise that the Snakes' scruffy vocalist, Andre Ethier, has released a solo debut (with the help of pianist Christopher Sandes and rhythm section Pickles and Price) that applies the exact same preoccupations to mid-1970s piano-folk? The resulting record is more restrained, focused, and narrative than anything in The Deadly Snakes' explosive discography-- but, happily, it's not much quieter.
All of the tracks are first-takes, peppered with tiny mistakes and glib, spontaneous gurgles. Subsequently, the record is pleasantly disjointed-- a creaky and fragmented smattering of story-songs. Ethier's vocal gymnastics are often compared to Bob Dylan's, and while their respective pipes may overlap in tone and syntax, it's the pair's shared affinity for bleak-but-soulful growls that ultimately seals the analogy. Ethier's deep, whiskey-soaked caterwauls ("I've slept beneath rocks and trees/ Out in the clover with the honeybees/ Won't you let me put my suitcase down?") are hollow and heartfelt, riddled with emotion but delivered with damp, blank-faced apathy.
Backed by Christopher Sandes' expert, diddling piano lines, Ethier's acoustic guitar and ukulele, and Pickles and Price's upright bass and drums, Ethier's vocals somehow become the stubborn centerpiece of nearly every track: mesmerizing, weird and totally raucous. But despite all the Dylan overlap, Ethier's debut is still more an unapologetic homage to Randy Newman than a "New Dylan" potshot: Sandes' piano noodling, when wed with Ethier's guttural rumbles, points directly to mid-70s Randy, matching piano balladry with misfit storytelling.
Ethier perfectly embodies the overeducated-outlaw archetype (see: Hunter S. Thompson), entertaining and irritating women ("I've been a fool and philistine for you/ Please don't make me sleep out in the cold"), eschewing the law, and forging on and on. His songs are populated by a revolving cast of erstwhile, parcel-toting vagrants (see: Crazy May, Dirty Dave) who may or may not be wearing shoes-- sinners who lob rocks at giant wasp's nests and crush insects with their boot heels while dice fly high, cash is rolled tight, and no one ever seems to know or remember where they're supposed to be sleeping that night. It's all rough road stories and rollicking piano fills-- everyone uses a jacket as a pillow and curls up to snooze with one eye open, twitching themselves asleep to sound of gently brushed drums and Ethier's throaty whispers. There are far worse ways to crash.
