For their fifth long player, the Seattle-based STRAW DOGS continue on the same path they've crafted out since their early eighties, self-titled debut; a rootsy, confident soft-rock sound that you only find in the good old US of A.
Straw Dogs is ostensibly the creation of one David Von Beck. I googled him and it brought up the band's name as the fourth result. The top spot? That goes to one 'David Von Beck, Construction Lawyer '. Yes, dear reader, you heard that right; in the 00s, our rockstars are also legal counsels. Well something has to pay the bills - and clearly it isn't Straw Dog's album sales.
I say this after several listens to 'Love and Then Hope'. The album begins with some promise - "Lie Awake" opens nicely enough but builds up to a chorus that packs little punch. "Fallow" might up the ante some - there's a nice slide guitar in there but it's soon torn down by the vocals, which dominate every single track and then some.
Would that make Straw Dogs little more than a vanity project? The production would seem to indicate so - it's squeaky clean and the full weight given to the vocals ruins any edge that Von Beck's songwriting and lyrics might hope to have. And with lines like "I wallow here in the vapour of her trails," do we really want to hear them?
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Ultimately though, what the album suffers from is predictability and a sad lack of inspiration. While it might be accessible to a fault and straddle turf well-trodden by REM and Counting Crows, it offers nothing quite as commercial as either. There are tinges of something interesting - a touch Son Volt here, a bit of Ryan Adams there - but nothing that's explored beyond the surface.
If one is to try and find a silver-lining in such musical drudgery then maybe we should concentrate on the wholesomeness of the enterprise: it's positive, easygoing stuff that at least doesn't try and be anything more than it is - a solid enough album for a certain kind of music fan, but with incredibly soft corners and a truly awful production ethos. I'm just not the right kind of music fan for this...
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