{"id":46957,"date":"2024-08-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-new-kid\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:07","slug":"the-new-kid","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-new-kid\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Kid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professional musicians often put so much effort into coming up with a memorable stage name that it seems almost unfair when a performer shows up bearing a birth name like Pemberton Roach. <\/p>\n

While the New York City musician-about-town is hardly a newcomer\u2014Roach has played gigs behind artists as wide-ranging as Trace Adkins, Jello Biafra, Moby, Max Weinberg, and Allen Toussaint\u2014The New Kid<\/i> is just his second solo album. And while he can be something of a musical chameleon in his most frequent role of bassist\/harmony vocalist, doing stints over the years in punk, Latin, death metal, and indie rock bands (notably personal faves Last Charge Of The Light Horse<\/a>), here he returns again to his musical roots. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, Roach immersed himself in his radio station manager father\u2019s collection of classic country LPs, and appears to have learned all the right lessons from them.<\/p>\n

Those lessons are mostly about making sure you have a good story to tell, and then telling it in the most direct and relatable way possible, playing it straight sometimes, and for laughs others. Roach has a resonant tenor voice that reminds of Arms Of Kismet<\/a>\u2019s Mark Doyon, nowhere more so that on the opening title track, a snappy, melodic, rather poppy number that deploys multiple guitars, synthesizer, organ, mandolin, banjo, bubbly bass and pulsing drums in support of an autobiographical number about feeling awkward and out of place as the new kid in school. \u201cShe said \u2018Don\u2019t you love that new Depeche Mode song?\u2019 \/ I was too scared to tell her I didn\u2019t know who that was\u2026 I had just moved there \/ And it all seemed so strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

The layers and density of that strong opener offer a hint that Roach isn\u2019t afraid to mix and match styles in service of his songs. \u201cDown The Road\u201d lives inside a classic-country frame complete with acoustic, steel and stand-up bass, and then sticks a horn-heavy Dixieland jazz bridge in the middle of it\u2014which works beautifully, of course. The retro-traditionalist feel continues with \u201cThe Old Days,\u201d a waltzing, swoony ballad featuring acoustic guitar and Claudia Chopek\u2019s violin.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Friend In Connecticut\u201d is a pure hoot, thoroughly inhabiting a sort of Jimmy Buffett-ish \u201clovable laid-back dude bumming a day in the country off his pal\u201d vibe, with Gwendolyn Vest\u2019s flute providing a sunny, playful solo. The mood takes a turn on \u201cFor A Minute There,\u201d which rides a rather James Taylor-ish acoustic riff, just guitar and voice lamenting a promising romance that\u2019s fizzled, before things lighten up again for the sugary-sweet, lighthearted country-folk romp \u201cHoney Bun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roach gets his Dylan on with \u201cTarrytown,\u201d a brief story-song set to picked electric guitar that sets up the fuller and sunnier \u201cThe First Day.\u201d Organ, banjo, harmonica, trumpet and flugelhorn gather over a gentle march, painting a nostalgic countryside scene of \u201cThe first day that you fell in love.\u201d A very different take on a similar situation bursts onto the scene with \u201cLove Is Blind,\u201d a galloping number about the reckless runaway feeling of falling in love. <\/p>\n

Roach closes things out on his own with just voice and acoustic on \u201cI Became A Drunk,\u201d a confessional number about falling apart after a breakup: \u201cI always liked to drink \/ But I became a drunk today.\u201d An upright bass solo adds pathos at the bridge, and then Roach\u2019s narrator heads on home to sleep if off.<\/p>\n

Roach self-produced The New Kid<\/i>, covering bass, keyboards, guitar and banjo, while bringing in a gaggle of guest players to round out the proceedings on drums (Nigel Rawles, Brendan McGowan), pedal steel (Jon Skibic), violin (Claudia Chopek), trumpet (Joe Drew, Nick Vest) and flute (Gwendolyn Vest). (The latter pair are in fact second-generation collaborators; their father Jean-Paul Vest is frontman of, and Roach\u2019s bandmate in, Last Charge Of The Light Horse.) As the liner notes happily declare: \u201cAll music on this album was played and sung by human beings on real instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the key here; Pemberton Roach\u2019s music is warm and direct and infused with humanity, fueled by an easygoing appeal that sometimes belies the seriousness of the themes his songs explore. The New Kid<\/i> is a fun neighbor of an album, a charmer with depth and dimension, the kind of music that makes you smile and laugh even as it prods you to consider the consequences of your choices. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10998],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46957","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-pemberton-roach","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46957","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=46957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46957"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}