Along with codependents like Dawes and more recently Blitzen Trapper, Deer Tick have taken advantage of rock's ebb from masculine aggressiveness, guitars, and live debauchery and assumed the mantle of a certain rabble-rousing, hard-living, road-dog ideal to much acclaim. But on their previous LPs, you could chalk up their "real deal" shtick to youth and inexperience, and it was hard to truly hate-- how to explain the heel turn they take here? Within the first 10 minutes, John J. McCauley III has laid out in no uncertain terms that he's going to get super blotto tonight, called you a fucking douchebag, belched loudly, and then capped it off by matter-of-factly stating, "let's all get drunk." You know, we all have our laugh at hipster bars, but spend some time in Divine Providence's wake of spilled beers, slurred insults, and macho posturing, and recognize that terrible mustaches and "Bring Your Own Cassette" nights are the least of our problems.
Maybe it's got something to do with the boys being back in town: They recorded in their home city, where the drink will flow and the blood will spill and if McCauley wants to fight, you better let him. This isn't a problem in and of itself, since McCauley has an endearingly ragged, if not always euphonious voice that's built for this sort of outlaw pose. Likewise, as a band Deer Tick have enough expertise to handle any style of intoxicated rock with ample hooks-- alt-country, early Replacements punk, Brit Invasion garage-- but play it sloppy enough to make it clear that being confined to a studio is a necessary evil before they come to your town and help you party down. Unless they have a warrant in it, and according to barnstorming opener "The Bump", they almost certainly do.
And it's certainly admirable in theory that McCauley chooses to be the increasingly rare lyricist relying on storytelling-- for all of the basic rhymes and stunted poetry, he intends to be heard and taken at face value. Problem is, these songs thus live and die by the depth of McCauley's characters, and while they fuck up repeatedly and alienate everyone including the listener, they're not so much lovable losers as horribly unsympathetic people who just aren't compelling at all-- the perfect bar band for Paddy's Pub, only without the jokes. "Give me a spark!/ And I'm an atom bomb!/ Give me some pills/ And I can't stand up!" McCauley yells during "The Bump" while the band barely chips in with off-key harmonies and an interminable whistling solo as reminders that these dudes don't give a shit, bro. They don't take no shit either-- not from no two-bit job ("Chevy Express"), or woman (take your pick), or new boyfriend ("Make Believe"), or the cops (again, take your pick). Problem is, it's hard for you to give a shit either with Deer Tick's insistence on merely borrowing swagger instead of owning it. This is particularly true of the otherwise anthemic "Main Street", which conjures the mythos of the Rolling Stones by namedropping a bunch of their albums you could be listening to instead.
Then again, I'll take their unfocused flexing of beer muscles over weepy barstool poetry-- "Electric" nixes the drums and guitars so McCauley can get a little time to himself to philosophize about our social contract ("I need electric to get me high/ But I don't need your friendly smiles/ I'm just the brakes and you're the miles"...huh?). But even with the portentous, droning keyboards, the lack of resonance is borderline laughable, and besides, by the next song, he's regained enough of a third wind to act like a leg-humping frat dude turning on some last-call sleaze over "Brown Eyed Girl" ("Miss K."). To top it off, there's the C&W weeper sung by drummer Dennis Ryan working shopworn prayers about fighting off the devil, a concerned wife, and pedophilic urges with lines like, "I take cover behind my white facepaint/ While I battle my bitter father's ghost." Then you realize why this particular song is called "Clownin' Around", and it's actually more soul-crushing than Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", albeit for none of the same reasons.
For real, I'd love to think Deer Tick are fighting the good fight or at least serve a necessary purpose as rock music skews increasingly meta. Even if it's essentially a Bloodhound Gang song, or "TV Party" for the kind of people who thought Damaged was an endorsement for alcoholism, I gotta admit I got a laugh out of the dumbshit chants of "Let's All Go to the Bar"-- and if I ever find myself at a raging kegger in the near future, I won't hesitate to swap out "Red Solo Cup" for it. But the problem is, almost none of the decadence on Divine Providence sounds like any fun at all, nor is it self-aware enough to serve as some sort of cautionary tale. Don't blame it on the Henny-- to name a few bands working in a similarly boozy milieu, Titus Andronicus (the former band of guitarist Ian O'Neil) offer bracing unity, Hold Steady great stories, and Drive-By Truckers exponentially more empathy for the human condition. Deer Tick try to score points simply by sounding like they could drink all those bands under the table, and the self-absorbed and even downright hateful Divine Providence ends up drinking at you, not with you.
