Dan Blakeslee "Lincoln Street Roughs" (Peapod Recordings 2007)

Elvis, Thom Yorke, spaghetti westerns and John Bonham - what’s not to like?

This is Dan Blakeslee’s first full length proper since 1999, though having said that, there are only eight songs on this one. Dan, originally from Maine, could be loosely classed as folk, and counts Johnny Cash as a major influence, he’s even made a live album in a prison to emphasise the point! This record is not particularly Cash-like though, it would however sit nicely alongside Mark Eitzel/Red House Painters and Jeff Buckley. There’s a lot of cello on the record, a popular instrument at the moment, and one that creates a certain sombre and serious tone, interestingly the record company’s website states that the cellist (and effective backing vocalist) Juliet Nelson ‘listened to John Bonham’s isolated drum tracks from a Led Zeppelin bootleg before cutting her cello parts’, an inspired move. The power and pomp of Zeppelin is not there, but occasionally there is definitely some of that dark brooding feel of a song like ‘When The Levee Breaks’ or ‘Gallows Pole’, the latter particularly on a track that doesn’t happen to have any cello, just Dan and guitar, ‘He Cannot Take Me’. Jeff Buckley too was a big Zeppelin fan, and Dan has a Buckley-esque turn in his voice to which one would imagine the word ‘soaring’ is often applied, at times it threatens to launch into a full Billy Mackenzie ‘Party Fears Two’, but it never quite goes that far. There are some unusual songs that spring to mind, Elvis’s ‘Wooden Heart’ as reinterpreted by Thom Yorke, would be a reasonable description of the enjoyable ‘Your Spanish Scarf’, a song about crossing the ocean to meet a loved one in Spain.

Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’ (the sixties ‘Clouds’ song, not the later album) also provides some shapes and frames for parts of songs here and there. ‘Carrie’ promisingly starts a little like Ryan Adams’s ‘Come Pick Me Up’ but then doesn’t quite muster the same appeal, let’s just say Carrie’s not been going through the best of times. ‘Dear Ladies Of The Night’ is arguably the most enjoyable track with a mariachi trumpet for atmosphere (a trumpet which the sleeve notes reveal to be a flugelhorn as it happens), things then inventively stroll into Morricone inspired atmospherics, an intelligent, interesting and thoughtfully constructed song. The record is a solid piece of work throughout, from a clearly talented writer and singer, the one criticism would be a lack of hooks, okay so we know the intention was unlikely to be ‘let’s make a Girls Aloud record!’, but more moments of melodic or vocal appeal would pull you into the atmospheric songs as participant, rather than observer. Hopefully it won’t be well into the next decade before another record appears from such a creative performer.

Date review added:  Thursday, October 04, 2007
Reviewer:  Patrick Wilkins
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  www.danblakeslee.com