One of the great things about roots music is its Gothic legacy of cautionary tales, ghost stories, murder ballads, messages to the infirmed, and other such methods of macabre that allow country and roots artists to paint in dark colors when they so choose. This makes roots music one of the best realms to draw from when putting together your Halloween playlist.
At first I didn’t know what to make of this album. In places, this is the most accessible, most non-dark music they have ever done. There are many bands that if they had put out an album like this, grumbles of “going mainstream” or “selling out” would be heard. But The Auto Club is so weird, so fey to begin with, being more normal actually makes them even more weird than they were before, adding to the mystique and mythos behind the band.
Seeing Denver’s Slim Cessna’s Auto Club live is a religious experience. And if you’ve ever seen them, you know that calling it “religious” is less of a descriptive tool, and more of a pun. This is one of those bands that I’d heard for years how I must see live, and without question, they lived […]