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J. Roddy Walston & the Business - J. Roddy Walston & the Business

Rating

RIYL

Queens of the Stone Age
The Hives
The Raconteurs
Kings of Leon

Release Date

07/27/2010

Label

Vagrant Records

Tracklist

1. Don't Break The Needle
2. Full Growing Man
3. Used To Did
4. Pigs & Pearls
5. Brave Man's Death 6. Don't Get Old
7. I Don't Wanna Hear It
8. Uh Oh Rock & Roll
9. Caroline
10. Use Your Language

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Sometimes when I eat too much cheese, I dream that I’m John Travolta in that 50s diner in Pulp Fiction. However, instead of being with Uma Thurman, I’ve brought along some weird hybrid of Andy Hull and Elvis Costello, and he/it’s fronting the prom band from Back to the Future. But then I wake up and realise, no, that’s just the debut self titled album from J Roddy Walston & the Business. In truth, this dream has been haunting me for the last two months, and I’ve struggled to figure out what the hell this album is, but I’ve figured it out; it is just damn good.

At the heart of it, The Business are about the most honest representation of Americana I’ve ever listened to. Of course, not being American might render such an opinion slightly void, but when the opening track’s upright piano swings you into a drug binge ballad before the rest of the band come crashing in with full flange cymbals and no knowledge of clean channel amps, tell me I’m wrong. I think this is why it took me so long to hook in to this album, I had no idea how to relate to it. Even if the provided RIYL barely relates, if you get a long haired Caleb Followil, a pre-re-inventing vinyl Jack White, Pelle Almvqist and Josh Homme together in that Large Hadron Collider in Sweden, I reckon you’d get a noise pretty similar to The Business.

Just like Mumford and Sons made the banjo mainstream last year, J Roddy has pulled out all the stops to make the piano rock and roll for the first time since … (error 212: pop culture reference limit reached). He backs it up with a voice that rolls from bottom of the bourbon bottle gravel to a full scope scream in about four bars. While the first two tracks open the album up like a shotgun in the side of a barn, he makes full use of his voice in third track "Used to Did," a song which appears to be about swapping love and affection for sex, drugs and rock and roll. The following track, "Pigs & Pearls," showcases the diversity (within reason) of the Baltimore quartet with Billy Gordon breaking out a open slide guitar and J Roddy bellowing some true bluegrass lyrics in, "You are just / a pig / I fed with pearls."

Obviously the good people at Vagrant still have their wits about them when signing bands, because with the right publicity, The Business' debut could be one of the most important releases of 2010. There are albums that on first listen don’t particularly take, but grow on you in time and with persistence. This is not one of them; this is an album that is so affronting on first listen that it renders all preconceptions of music absent. You might not enjoy that, but in the coming weeks you will understand, and you will come to rejoice in the beast that is J Roddy Walston & The Business.

--Sandy Powell