To get this out of the way early on, I must say that the recording quality is all over the shop. For example, 16 Days has a thin and strangled sound for the drums and horns; yet the very next song is wonderfully crisp and sounds great. Also, some songs have a lot of boomy low-frequency noise from the kick-drum and double-bass (as it they forgot to run a high-pass filter over it), which is messy and doesn't add anything to the musical experience. This noise also confuses the hell out of CD ripping software, so the resulting mp3/ogg files are frustratingly full of random clipping.
Anyways, St Christopher kicks things off with some great lyrics delivered with an appropriately snarly vocal style. I think the backing instruments are a bit lacklustre (perhaps due to the recording quality), but overall it's an enjoyable tale. You Are The Best Thing And The Worst Thing continues the attitude, with a latin influence nicely thrown into the mix.
The jungle-drum opening gave me high hopes for Heart-Sized Crush, but alas the deadpan vocal style kind of undermines it. Also, the abrupt jumps between sections feel a bit contrived.
It Was Raining takes things into a new direction, in the form of a beautiful and simple ballad. Here we see a much broader range in the vocals, as they brilliantly convey emotions ranging from hushed sorrow to angry shouting to howls of torment.
The moody instrumental setting introduces King Of Brooklyn perfectly. It paints a wonderfully rich landscape, especially the ever-haunting organ. To cap it off, the narrative and lyrics are incredibly powerful. Bourbon In Your Eyes follows a similar recipe, although doesn't quite hit the same heights.
Things You Make Me Do is a bit middle-of-the-road. But the rich instrumental sound, and the ebbs and flows throughout the song, makes for an enjoyable experience.
As for Faith In Love, Buffy The Vampire Slayer isn't my cup of tea. And it isn't rockabilly, so I don't like it!
Speaking of oddball inclusions, Driven To Distraction and Why work well to inject some variety into the album. Liquor Store has an interesting narrative, but I'm not a fan of the slick "jive" style of rock'n'roll.
Queen Of Pain is a great soft blues, absolutely brimming with style and emotion. You Put A Spell On Me would be the same, were it not for the silly distraction of the fast-tempo ending.
The other blues effort, If I Died In Your Arms, is an absolute cracker. There's some very strange audio artifacts at times and the effects are a touch overdone, but nothing can undermine the brilliance of this sparse, yet powerful, blues ballad. Spine-tingling.
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