Jimbo Mathus of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and singer\/songwriter Andrew Bird have been friends for decades. As a young singer\/fiddle player, Bird got his start playing on some notable \u201890s Zippers tracks. As his own career took off, he stayed in touch with Mathus and talk of a collaborative album began in earnest. Finally during Covid, they got together and made a very intriguing record.<\/p>\n
Starting off with the very folksy \u201cPoor Lost Souls,\u201d you get a nice combination of both men\u2019s sounds. Bird has a very earnest indie rock\/roots sound and Mathus, despite his background with the Zippers, has a full-on folk sound; the combination works modestly well. \u201cSweet Oblivion\u201d is the perfect example, and it\u2019s one of the most exciting songs I\u2019ve heard all year.<\/p>\n
But then the album gets bogged down in slow mediocrity. Songs like \u201cBeat Still My Heart\u201d go on too long and don\u2019t go anywhere! \u201cRed Velvet Rope\u201d comes off sounding like James Taylor, and that\u2019s not a compliment. \u201cHigh John\u201d sounds like a Mathus solo track, but it\u2019s memorable, even if it has the beat of a slow, broken down metronome.<\/p>\n
This is the type of album that one hears in the background of a Starbucks while they\u2019re waiting for their orders. It\u2019s not spectacular; it\u2019s interesting, but the dullness that overtakes it robs it of so much potential that it cannot recover. \u201cBell Witch\u201d and \u201cBurn The Honky Tonk\u201d are two of the only tracks toward the end of the disc that have any real spark of life and help the record feel more alive than it really is.<\/p>\n
Mathus has been leading a revitalized Zippers over the last few years with pretty dismal results, but it\u2019s nice to see him take a step back to the band\u2019s past and team up with an old friend to create something that has probably done both men some good. If only it could\u2019ve been more interesting and a bit livelier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":34306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10644],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-46141","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jimbo-mathus-andrew-bird","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46141","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\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46141"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}