Being a talented musician must be pretty cool. While other people spend hours at a time hunched over their respective instruments, trying desperately to come up with a single song that's worth a damn, you can do better things with your time. For instance, you can feed a hungry child. Or you can build a terrarium. Or, if you're so inclined, you can record a terrible album with your talented musician friends.
Of course, talent is not without its down side. One of the most common arguments used in the defense of shitty music is, "Hey, man, these guys may not be the best musicians in the world, but they work totally hard! I've known them for years, and I've never known more hard-working, dedicated people. Fuck you for judging them! They once slept on my couch! I know the bassist's sister!" In other words: "They have no talent, but they try really hard." But when a slew of crazily talented musicians come together and turn out a sloppy and tossed-off mess, things are a little harder to justify.
The Drag City Supersession is made up of core musicians Bill Callahan ((Smog)), Rian Murphy, Neil Michael Hagerty, and Edith Frost. All are talented performers and songwriters; all have made significant contributions to the world of independent music; and all have done so in their own distinctively unique ways. Yet with Tramps, Traitors and Little Devils, the focus that has enabled these musicians to create such convincing work is entirely absent. And as they struggle through weak-as-fuck Sabbath covers and barely rehearsed originals, it leaves this record sounding less like a Supersession than a high school talent show.
Sloppiness is okay when it's a by-product of uncontainable energy. But on Tramps, Traitors and Little Devils, with its awkward, fumbling guitar parts and poorly arranged strings, one can't help but feel that this was a project thrown together quickly by people who really didn't give a fuck about it. There's no energy. There's no fun. There's no reason for them to subject people to this.
Within the first few seconds of the Bill Callahan original, "Zero Degrees," that opens the record, it's clear that Tramps, Traitors and Little Devils isn't going to be an easy ride. The song itself is not nearly up to par with most of Callahan's material, relying mostly upon a vaguely dissonant and tremendously uninteresting bass riff. But as the song develops, it becomes clear why Callahan wouldn't have wanted one of his better songs to appear on this record-- it's hard to imagine somebody saying, "Why don't I use one of my best songs for this new, thrown-together 'Supersession' so that Neil Michael Hagerty can skullfuck it with an out-of-tune slide guitar?" There's nothing wrong with being a little out of tune when the music calls for it, but the combination of sloppy, tuneless guitar, and pointless, unmelodic bass makes "Zero Degrees" nothing short of painful listening. If the musicians involved in this record actually listened back to this kind of thing and said, "Man, I can't wait for my name to be attached to this," they should at the very least retire, and at the very most be force-fed their own ears.
Perhaps I'm being a little too hard on these people. Their collective musical talents have given me hours upon hours of enjoyment, and musical memories that will last me for the rest of my life. But all that just doesn't change the fact that Tramps, Traitors and Little Devils blows. At its best, like on Edith Frost's "Leaving the Army," it's sufficiently unobtrusive, with unnecessary guitar plunking only minimally fucking up an otherwise passable song. Hey, on "Old Man," when Frost is basically left to her own for a little while, it's downright pretty. But as a "Supersession," with no one musician's vision guiding the way, Drag City's impressive roster is reduced to a tuneless jam band whose members don't even sound like they're having a good time. Drag City, indeed.
