Antiseptic studio conditions don't suit everybody. Over the years, this writer's heard great records laid down everywhere from lighthouses (Mum) to oast houses (The Only Ones) through to sheep shearing sheds in remote parts of Western Australia (The Triffids), so the need for rigid studio conditions can often be irrelevant to the creative process.
Grizzled troubadour TOM OVANS is certainly the sort of geezer who'd have little truck with 96-track studios and 'fixing it in the mix' and all that malarkey. So it should come as no surprise that the Austin-based singer/ songwriter found a primitive analogue studio on the city's seedy industrial east side to track his twelfth album 'Get On Board'. If that wasn't already vibe-y and grimy enough, said complex shared warehouse space with a concrete fabrication shop, ensuring Tom and his band would need to squeeze past an array of lathes, power tools and work benches on the way to the sessions on a daily basis.
If this sounds vastly removed from the supposed 'glamour' of Rock'n'Roll, well it is, but it's just the right environment for a seasoned campaigner like Tom Ovans to flesh out his none-more-real vignettes along with his dusty henchmen, several of whom (drummer Vincente Rodriguez and lead guitarist Larry Chaney) have been retained from the sessions for Ovans' previous album, 2007's 'Party Girl'.
That album had its' moments, but in truth 'Get On Board' is a superior successor. It's more consistent and, in places, rocks much harder. As with most of his albums, Tom's uber-gravelly growl of a voice (imagine an unholy alliance of Bob Dylan, Vic Chestnutt and Thin White Rope's Guy Kyser with a year's supply of Meths and you're almost there) will sort the wheat from the chaff, but if you can hack it, you're in for a treat.
The title track kicks us off and it's a fine, hip-swingin' anthem in the Stones/ Crazy Horse mould. Not what you might immediately expect from Ovans, but it suits him, as does the the Keef-y swagger of 'Honorable Mention' where Tom celebrates the also-ran heroes out there, even if it's tough not to detect a touch of autobiography in there when he sings: "I gotta lotta inspiration, but no reputation...I just get an honourable mention." Elsewhere, the band groove beautifully around the Muscle Shoals-style horns on the sweaty Southern Soul of 'Night Train' while the touching 'Taken with You' ("when you find someone who's true, your heart will tell you what to do") is not only a rare love song to melt your heart, but quite possibly the prettiest thing this writer has ever heard Ovans commit to tape.
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However, if such positive notices are giving you palpitations, then fear not, for large swathes of 'Get on Board' roll like tumbleweed across the ghost towns in Tom's mind. Songs like 'Western Plain Blues' ("every man here must lear how to fail/ every man here must spend some time in jail") sup from a bottomless well of fatalistic Country-Blues, while 'Every Single One' is a blasted acoustic confessional and the brooding and skeletal 'What I Saw' is so damn scarred and it could almost be one of Charlie Parr's fiery blues outings.
The album's tangible autobiograpical bent continues through tracks like 'Rainbows' and 'Breakdown & Cry'. The former finds Ovans delivering a semi-spoken narrative, describing a Steinbeckian pilgrimage to California during (I think) the height of the Hippie Era ("sittin' at a campsite at Big Sur with the whole damn country at our backs"), though its' images of "rustin' factories to unemployment lines" is every bit as relevant now. 'Breakdown & Cry' examines a similar theme but with the benefit of an anthemic chorus, while 'Candy Lane' ("if you're missin' your wife, don't come lookin' for me") adds a dollop of much needed humour.
The one place he comes unstuck is with the 7-minute plus Greenwich Village tale 'Too Late Now' which is simply too overwrought to resonate. Nonetheless, this one blemish isn't enough to destroy what amounts to Tom Ovans' most complete and compelling album yet. An outsider lauded merely in dispatches he may be, but the hard-bitten music he makes suggests the wrong side of the tracks is still the best creative place for him to dwell.
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