{"id":39961,"date":"2006-09-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/win-or-lose\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:13","slug":"win-or-lose","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/win-or-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Win? Or Lose?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irony can be a ton of fun when it\u2019s intentional.\u00a0 When it appears unconscious, maybe not so much. <\/p>\n

Most every singer-songwriter of the past 30 years who isn\u2019t either a hack or a liar will acknowledge Joni Mitchell<\/a> as some sort of an influence.\u00a0 The particularly audacious — see Adam Duritz<\/a> — might take it a step farther and cover a Joni song.\u00a0 It takes a special kind of hubris, though, to go and name a song \u201cJoni Mitchell Was Right.\u201d<\/p>\n

By this point, Alec Gross may be fearing the worst (\u201cI knew Joni Mitchell.\u00a0 Joni Mitchell was a friend of mine.\u00a0 Alec Gross, you\u2019re no\u2026 etc.\u201d).\u00a0 But chill, man.\u00a0 I come not to bury Win? Or Lose?, but to praise it.\u00a0 The irony of which I speak is that the song Mr. Gross named for Ms. Mitchell might just be this album\u2019s weakest link.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Far better are the breathy contemplations of \u201cBroken In Two,\u201d the perceptive poetry of \u201cCold Apples\u201d or the spot-on love-balladry of \u201cFavorite Dream.\u201d\u00a0 Alt-country vocalist\/guitarist Gross and his four-man band the Districts do rev it up on cuts like the thumping country-rocker \u201cFix My Dreams,\u201d and lead guitarist Max Sorenson and piano man Jay Hardin get some especially nice licks in on the bridge\/solo section of \u201cCold Apples.\u201d\u00a0 But to my ears the quieter, more folk-tinged tunes are where Gross and company really nail these songs.<\/p>\n

This may in part result from my sense that Gross sometimes misses notes on punchier cuts like \u201c<\/place>Piscataway,\u201d but he gets points for singing like he means it, much like a certain favorite son of <\/state><\/place>New Jersey who\u2019s another acknowledged influence.\u00a0 As for \u201cJoni Mitchell Was Right (<\/date>1-2-3),\u201d it\u2019s a really-wants-to-be-clever country-rock number about a suddenly gorgeous ex — \u201cShe\u2019s one, two, three strikes as pretty as before\u201d \u2013 but the song\u2019s punchlines lack punch and its sloppy-grin bravado is the polar opposite of Mitchell\u2019s somber confessional style.<\/p>\n

The occasional misfire can\u2019t eclipse this disc\u2019s craftsmanship, though, especially on the ballads.\u00a0 Win? Or Lose?<\/em> is a solid effort that suggests there is more and better to come from Gross & The Districts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7819],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39961","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-alec-gross","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39961"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}