Revival!

You know how sometimes, someone who thinks he or she is a writer will run across some new band, or new book, or new movie, and this person will decide to try their hand at some form of review or critique of said new item? And you know how annoying it can be when you've never heard of whatever it is being discussed and you don't so much care? You do?

Yeah, you might want to look away...

I've been waiting for Green Corn Revival's full-length CD Say You're a Sinner since I caught the Weatherford, Oklahoma band by accident at the Norman Music Festival this spring. The three-song EP I bought at the show was pretty good but was only three songs long; there had to be more! Sinner is now available digitally and will be out in a physical format next month.

Vocalists Jared Deck and Natalie Houck work their notes together like very few male-female singing pairs can manage and their interplay calls to mind late-period X. This is a band with two lead vocalists, not a lead and a girl backup singer. Deck and Houck's clear tones don't resemble John Doe's baritone snarl or Exene Cervenka's high-lonesome-of-the-damned wail all that much. But Doe and Cervenka together managed to do things together that neither of them repeated with other singers. Deck and Houck display the same gift of being able to use the different tones of their voices to compliment, strengthen and even challenge each other's singing. Nowhere is that more evident than on "Blue Water," the album closer that could sit pretty comfortably on X's See How We Are or More Fun in the New World. The use of a call-and-response style refrain and harmonies that are just a hair out of sync (time-wise, that is -- the notes are spot on) highlight each voice's distinctiveness and add dimension and depth to the spare word-pictures of the lyrics.

This is also music you can think to, if you'd like. In "Watching Over Me," Deck is alternately attracted and wary of the woman in his life, acknowledging that even though she me might be one of the "thousand ways to heaven," he's not at all sure he wants to follow her path there. Or maybe he's talking about about a piece of religious art he's seen that's supposed to inspire but instead offers a cold and sterile vision of the faith it represents. Just listening, there's no real way to tell and the "real" meaning could be either, both or neither.

The instrumentation deepens the songs as well. GCR adds keyboards, dobro, banjo, pedal steel and mandolin, as well as some brass now and again, to their straight-ahead guitar-bass-drums sound, providing music that ranges from something that might play over Clint Eastwood riding across Sergio Leone's camera lens to songs that call up a vision of the kind of records we might have heard if E Street had been found in Oklahoma City instead of Belmar, NJ.

Given the band's name, the amount of spiritual imagery in the lyrics and the references to faith in the band's bio, a fellow in my profession would probably enjoy a long conversation with the band about some of the meanings found in the songs. But listeners just wanting some wonderful windswept roots rock with a prairie twang should have a great time getting caught up in this particular revival, regardless of their faith perspectives.

Say You're a Sinner follows on a busy touring schedule and a gig backing up Oklahoma rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson at the South by Southwest Festival earlier this year. If you get the chance, catch a show or buy a record, digitally or otherwise. Even if GCR isn't the cup of tea for you that it's been for me, you could do a lot worse than supporting a local act that merits your favor ;-)