The content of this review was originally posted on the online music and popular culture magazine I See Sound on 16 Feb 2006.
Release Date: 24 Jan 2006 (Barsuk Records)
Download “Portland Is Leaving” (mp3)
Download “Tinfoil Hats” (mp3)
Alex, Kevin, and Josh were best friends in high school. Now, 14 years later, Alex was getting married. Kevin and Josh were back home together for the first time in years, and, in the interim, they’d both been through a lot of changes. While Alex stayed in touch with both of them, Kevin and Josh hadn’t talked to each other in quite a while.
When they were in high school, the three of them would often walk along the train tracks that cut across their small, midwestern town. Now, the night before Alex tied the knot, Kevin and Josh found themselves with a loss for things to do or to talk about. They’d been hanging out together for the past few days. There was Alex’s bachelor party. They’d been out almost every night they’d been back to their childhood hometown. However, when you’re back home in rural Indiana, you can only go out to the same few bars so many times before you get bored. So they started walking along those tracks again.
They’d forgotten a lot about the town in which they grew up. Kevin, on the other hand, had been living in Phoenix for about 2 years. He avoided settling down. He moved every couple of years. He regretted how most of his relationships floundered to an end. Josh was living in Boston because he had joint custody of his son with his ex-wife. He couldn’t move from that Massachusetts harbor town without giving up something he held as the most cherished part of his life. Walking on the gravel beside the railroad ties, they started talking about how the town had grown and changed.
“Did you ever think there’d be a Wal-Mart here?” and “Did you think that Hanson’s Hardware store would-a closed and a Lowe’s would’ve opened?” were types of questions that got the conversation started. Then the dialogue shifted to their memories of younger days.
Reliving some of the mishaps and adventures of being teenagers, Kevin, who’d been doing most of the talking, said, “This reminds me of a line from a song called ‘White Daisy Passion.’”
“That’s on Makers the new Rocky Votolato disc,” asked Josh, a little surprised.