ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Middle Brother
There’s a singer-songwriter intimacy in many of the songs onMiddle Brother, as though band members John McCauley, Taylor Goldsmith and Matthew Vasquez were sharing secrets and anecdotes and decided to set them to music. All three men belong to bands — Deer Tick, Dawes and Delta Spirit — that trade on folk, blues and country traditions; even their up-tempo songs are less rave-up rockers than hand-clapping foot-stompers. Although a press release says Middle Brother is a group of “young rock songwriters” striving to “carry on the tradition” of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, it’s pretty clear that so unassuming an album as this is never going to have the cultural or commercial impact of those men. Still, as a semi-super-grouping of cult indie faves, these guys have their hearts in the right place, even if their heads are in the clouds and their livers are in the bar. Source
