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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Show preview/CD review - Have Gun, Will Travel, Postcards from the Friendly City; CD release show this Saturday at New World
Posted by Leilani Polk on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:00 PM
Last year, Bradenton-based quintet Have Gun, Will Travel caught the attention of NPR with their stylistic and thematic take on Old West-flavored Americana in Casting Shadows Tall as Giants, their sophomore full-length.
The band’s self-released third effort, Postcards from the Friendly City (out Nov. 17) maintains the dusty trailblazing charm of its predecessor with rambling melodies, rustic musical textures — banjo, lap steel and acoustic guitar, viola, harmonica, percussive frills from cowbell to shakers — and the vivid storytelling of lead singer/songwriter Matt Burke, his lyricism continuing to draw from different moods of times long past.
The pervading call of crickets and other rural evening sounds open the ominous “Wolf in Shepard’s Clothes” as the underlings of a toxic leader plan a revolution: “We got the number while the captain slumbered, and we’re gonna cut him down.”
The band gets introspective about society in “Sons and Daughters of the Gilded Age,” makes an appealing argument for leaving the “Land of the Living” (“You can be Ferdinand Magellan and I will be Sir Francis Drake / Let’s embark on a brand new adventure…”), dedicates a melancholy ode to a woman dead and buried 17 years in “Rosie, a Belated Requiem,” relates the tense tale of a poker game gone wrong in “Asa Dalton,” and breaks up the verbiage with a simple ragtime-inspired instrumental, “Maritime Rag,” creating such an authentic atmosphere with barroom talking and bottles clinking that you can almost see the pianola player in the corner.
Postcards is another solid effort from the boys of HGWT, who’ve once again shown they can address timeless, relatable subjects — misplaced authority, love and loss, the struggle to survive, the desire for adventure — using an old-fashioned aesthetic.
Have Gun, Will Travel CD Release Show w/Lauris Vidal/Whiskey Gentry, Sat., Nov. 14, 9 p.m., New World Brewery, Ybor City, $7. Click here to check out "Sons and Daughters of the Gilded Age."
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