When you combine the talents of a pair of Americana songwriting aces like Mary Bragg and Becky Warren, each a master of the deep-diving, heartfelt confessional, you know what to expect: songs that move your soul and dampen your eyes, anthems to independence, co-dependence, and all the fraught spaces in between.<\/p>\n
Which seems to be exactly why they did the opposite.<\/p>\n
Warren tells the story<\/a> thusly: \u201cI don\u2019t typically do a lot of co-writing, but at that time Mary and I were writing together almost every week and enjoying it. A couple of songs we co-wrote ended up on Mary\u2019s album [three, in fact, appear on Bragg\u2019s 2017 release Lucky Strike<\/i><\/a>], but then we wrote some goofier songs that weren\u2019t really right for either of our albums. After we\u2019d done a few of those, we thought \u2018What if we just did a whole album of these kind of goofy songs?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Thus was born The Reckless Electric, with Bragg and Warren writing and singing the songs, supported by a crack band comprised of friends and musical compatriots of each: Dan Knobler and Jeff Malinowski (guitars), Jimmy Sullivan (bass, organ), and Megan Jane (drums).<\/p>\n Warren continues: \u201cI call (the songs) goofy, but I\u2019m still really proud of them\u2014some are really hilarious! Usually the most hilarious parts are the parts Mary wrote, but they were just really fun to work on together. I would say \u2018Couldn\u2019t we write a song about ice cream and liquor?\u2019 And Mary would say \u2018It\u2019s hard to rhyme liquor\u2026\u2019 and I\u2019d say \u2018I don\u2019t care, let\u2019s try it!\u2019 It was a ridiculous idea, but we did it and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed it did, and few worked to greater comic affect than the giddy \u201cIce Cream And Liquor,\u201d in which each declares to an unlikely partner over a jaunty honky tonk arrangement that she \u201cThought we\u2019d clash, but we hardly ever bicker \/ You and me, baby, we\u2019re ice cream and liquor.\u201d<\/p>\n Moving effortlessly between trading lines and blending their voices in unison, Warren and Bragg offer equally clever and enthusiastic songs about nostalgia (\u201cComeback\u201d), the downside of dating a small-town BMOC (\u201cLocal\u201d), the kiddie beauty pageant scene (\u201cThe Little Miss Sparkle Pageant\u201d), and the tragi-comic consequences of winning a trip to France in a county fair jellybean-jar-counting contest (\u201cFrance\u201d).<\/p>\n On Tom Petty-esque rocker \u201cStraight A Girls,\u201d the pair makes fun of their own straight-laced-ness: \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t park in the fire lane \/ We wouldn\u2019t leave a mess \/ We wouldn\u2019t try to take thirteen items \/ In the twelve or less.\u201d And how could you possibly resist a song (\u201cLike Her\u201d) that opens with a line as specific yet revealing on multiple levels as \u201cShe made a needlepoint of Townes Van Zandt\u201d? It\u2019s hard not to think of Fountains Of Wayne when you encounter songwriting with this much craft, heart, and humor. <\/p>\n Much like FoW, Bragg and Warren make sure this album is more than a one-trick pony by injecting real emotion into these songs alongside the various punchlines. \u201cThe Say When\u201d sets its action in a neighborhood bar by that clever name, but the song itself is a wistful ode to the importance of community. And \u201cCome Around\u201d is downright serious, an anthem to longing and the magnetic pull of an old love.<\/p>\n The ultimate message of Comeback<\/i> is simple: laughter is good for the soul. These sassy tunes might not win any \u201cserious\u201d songwriting contests, but there\u2019s no denying the craft that Mary Bragg and Becky Warren poured into them\u2014and more importantly, the joy. The world could use a little more of both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10737],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46344","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-reckless-electric","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46344","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=46344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51666,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46344\/revisions\/51666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46344"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46344"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}