Lucero - Rebels, Rogues, & Sworn Brothers

The great American South, a mixture of romantic cultivation and sagging despondency, is both panoramic and castigated. The south is a place of antiquated lore and warm evenings haunted by the phantasms of an oft-ugly past. It’s the geographical area where whisky nights and Baptist mornings butt heads with an uncommonly alluring ferocity. It’s a culture rich with gallantry but stained with a history of detachment, melancholia, and defeat. And so, the music that comes out of the South has always possessed, to one degree or another, an aggrieved grittiness – endearingly downtrodden and tepidly hopeful. Boom or bust, but don’t you dare let your dreams intersect with your substantiality. Such legacy has spanned and defined the careers of musicians ranging from Robert Johnson to Johnny Cash. It’s a conundrum that reaches back to the reconstruction era: a historical study of perpendicular values and heart wrenching realities that have a tendency to be voluptuously beautiful.

Today, we label this genre with a variety of ubiquitous terms: contemporary bluegrass, alt-country, southern rock, cowpunk, folk country. But this legacy – of pain and pride, torture and redemption – has set the stage for an escalating series of tensions among those vying to assume a place with the hollowed names of the past. And with good cause, it would seem. Is the future cradled in the arms of Ryan Adams and Gillian Welch’s synthetic dissymmetry or will it manifest itself in the cornbread huskiness of groups like Old Crow Medicine Show and The Drive By Truckers? Or will the “future” emerge from somewhere less contrived, and undoubtedly, less heralded?

Lucero, which means blazing star in Spanish, has been poised to grab the reins of contemporary alt/country since their 20001 self titled release. The past 6 years has seen the Memphis area band – spearheaded by singer/songwriter Ben Nichol’s fractured vocals – release an able-bodied discography of textured and non-cyclic music. Lucero has a reputation for continually deconstructing and remobilizing their sound in order to create distinctly separate albums. 2002’s Tennessee was vociferously less linear than Lucero, 2003’s That Much Further West was littered with masculine guitar riffs and Replacements-esqe antipathy, and 2004’s Nobody’s Darlings was an enigmatic self-pitying, and - ultimately – guts and blood rock and roll album. Which brings us, finally, to 2006 and the band’s upcoming release of Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers.

Immediately upon Lucero’s precursory internet release of the song “I Can Get Us out Of Here Tonight,” pundits were conflagrant with the fact that – gasp - the band would dare create a song with semblances of Bruce Springsteen’s patented Asbury sound. Simply put, Southern music should be too proud to stoop to level of incorporating recognizable, East Coast nuances. Imagine, then, these same critics’ surprise when they heard the rest of the album – undeniably swollen with Boss-styled keys and Nichol’s vocal delineation leaning increasingly towards Springsteen’s oral stylings.

Before we delve into the specifics of this reemphasized Lucero, however, we should first examine the causal reality of any band or self-respecting artist who chooses to meander into the axiomatic and uncurbed musical world of the seminal Bruce Springsteen. The blunt reality of the situation is that any incorporation of the Asbury sound – whether it be bright keys, bluesy song architecture, or the “larger than life” vocal delivery – can’t be a bad thing. The Boss acquired his pseudonym by being, well, the The Boss. Nearly infallible in scope and monumental in size, Springsteen invigorated an entire generation.

With irony, then, Lucero has reinvented the southern sound by infringing upon the local sound of a place that is, both literally and figuratively, thousands of miles away. Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers attacks the listener straight off the starting block with “What Else Would You Have Me Be.” Seconds into the album, guitarist Brian Venable’s muscular riffs are intersected with irradiated keys and Nichol’s torn vocals. Away we go. “I gave you everything I stole/Then you stole your heart away from me.” The song sets the stage for an epic of an album, a metaphorical barn-burner that is touchingly heartbreaking. Because, despite its east coast swagger, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers is southern rock. Lost loves, blue collar daydreams, empty bottles. The second track of the album, “I Don’t Wanna Be The One,” displays a similar operational mechanism: Drummer Roy Berry’s drumming provides a thick backbone for the band’s bulky brand of grain alcohol fueled musings.

The album steadily picks up steam. The following two tracks, “San Francisco” and the aforementioned “I Can Get Us Out Of here”, sparkle and balloon with triumphant idiosyncrasy. You start to get the feel that Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers is like an 18 wheeler being ghost ridden down a mountain. Try as you might, this baby aint stopping. And then, BAM! The album comes to a screeching halt with, perhaps, the worst song Lucero has ever produced. That’s right, the unthinkable metasizes before the listeners ears with an unfortunate and long-winded buoyancy. For lack of a more incisory phrase, the track “1979” is simply awful. It’s the longest song on the album and almost painful to listen to. Venable’s guitar is completely overshadowed by the use of off-kilter keys and Nichol’s ridiculous lyrical musings. For that matter, his attempts to be nostalgic fall flat on its face. “It was 1979/Just skin and bones/Your favorite dress/motorcycle boots.” He is obviously trying to conjure images of a lovelorn boy and the former but not forgotten apple of his eye, but the final product seems to better describe a skanky whore ala Courtney Love. And then, just when the song seems that it can’t get any worse, the track is lit up with a cheese ball synth and Skynard-style ballad guitar.

The “1979” detour is, luckily, just that – a detour. The ensuing songs, “Cass” and “The Mountain” rebound quite nicely. Both tracks are quirky and addled with hickish lyricisms (specifically in “The Mountain” when the ever-humble Nichol’s promises to “Buy a mountain for me and you”) and swampy guitar/bass interplay. The eighth track, however, is the highlight of the album. “Sing Me No Hymns” is furiously gutter, uncouthly and powerfully despondent. At around the 2:30 mark, Venable, bassist John Stubblefield, and Berry work with each other to gradually build a wall of sound that falls in a sonic crescendo before giving away to a recklessly intense guitar solo. It is here, specifically within the closing solo, that that Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers climaxes. But fear not, because while this is where the album peaks, it does so only in terms of song tempo, not quality.

Out of the four remaining tracks, “The Weight of Guilt,” She’s Just That Kind of Girl,” “On The Way Back Home,” and “She Wakes When She Dreams,” “On The Way Back Home” is the most memorable. Perhaps the most emotionally touching Lucero song since the self titled’s “Hold Fast,” it’s eloquent in a retrospectively gentle way. The composition of the music, coupled with Nichol’s vocals, creates a multicultural sadness that pours on the heartbreak without being melodramatic or trite. It very well could have been the send-off song of the album and, most likely, it should have been – because here, the band’s emotional side is boiled down to reveal a basal core of personal, yet less-than-unique tragedy. We all bear the burden of second-guessing our youthful decisions. Such introspection is part of getting older, part of assimilating and developing the collective retrospection known as “experience.” Ultimately, that’s what makes the song so great.

One gets the sense that for the members of Lucero this is their only chance. Their hope for future success relies on their ability to capture what drives them. The question, then, becomes: what drives Lucero? They write of hometown Memphis with equal parts disdain and affection. They speak of their travels on the road with similar sense of wariness. In many ways, Nichols seems unsure of himself and his purpose. In his songs, he constantly fights the urge to give up and wash his inabilities away in the metaphorical bottle. But throughout it all – the trials, the tribulations, long nights on the road – the band maintains its frank and simple outlook on life. Sure, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers has a couple less-than-memorable songs and one really terrible one, but at its core, its hardworking, gritty music. Music lovers around the world appreciate Cash and Johnson not so much for their individual musical output or the varying nuances they assumed throughout their careers, but rather for their ability to capture a specific reality with startling accuracy. It may have not always been the prettiest or the most congenial, but it was painted in the broad and unforgettable strokes of brazen regionalism. And that, above all else, is what made American bluegrass/country/southern rock so undeniably powerful. On Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers, Lucero has recaptured that magic in a way that grabs your chest and steals your breath.

Yes, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers bears a tangible amount musical of similarities to Bruce Springsteen. Above all, Springsteen’s legacy will be his everyman honesty. And it is here, that Lucero shares the most in common with the legendary boss of Asbury Park. The search for true candor in music has become something of cliché. Every slick A&R rep trumpets the next big thing as possessing an uncommon sense of honesty. But honesty, like all humanistic virtues, cannot be forced. It can simply be created. Impossible to pinpoint with accurate description, it falls into the category of "I know it when I see it." And here, you see it. Or, rather, hear it. Throughout their career, Lucero, has earned the right to hang in the rarified air of legends past and Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers is merely a reminder of such.