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Folk music aficionados are fond of talking about tradition, about how
the music they play isn't designed to appeal to the academics and toffs,
about how it deals with real life the way it's been lived for centuries
and the concerns of everyday working folk. In that respect, Winnebago
Deal could well be described as purveyors of the real form of 21st
century folk music.
Of course you'd be rightly laughed out of the shop if you try
describing it like that. This is rock music, as you'd expect from a band
who've supported Fugazi, Therapy? and tour-mates Mondo
Generator, the Queens Of The Stone Age side-project of which the
two Winnebago Deal lads
became part (dubbed "Winnebago Generator").
The guitar, drums and vocal
duo make a sterling racket walking a road previously spat on by all manner
of punks and metallers. There's no artifice, nothing particularly new, no
light and shade, no subtlety and nuance. But then nor does there need to
be; this album bursts in, does its thing and its 14 tracks are gone,
barely nudging the 30-minute mark.
In that sense, it follows proudly in the traditions of the late 20th
Century, as you'll see in pubs across the land. And it's certainly not
music for the academics and toffs; it's Friday night fighting music,
sweaty moshpit music, bruising and beery, direct and to the point. Not
for the faint hearted or the overly intellectual; the screams and "I don't
give a fuck"s may not be rocket science but they are a mission statement
of a kind.
It's a childish one, admittedly - not childish in a Toy
Story way so much as in an egg-the-neighbours'-houses way - and after
a while it does get a bit tiring, even with so short an album. There
isn't a great deal of variety going on, between mid-tempo pop metal and
high-speed pop metal, and it feels like Rage Against The Machine's
debut in that the first four or five tracks are great but the rest starts
to get dull, no matter what order you listen to the tracks in.
Though there are highs and lows. The bookends of Heart Attack In My
Head and Can't See, Don't Care, Don't Know are high points, with the
latter standing above the rest in lyrics and in the dynamic build driven
by the rising guitar, and it feels more like a song than the short
sketches elsewhere. Ain't No Salvation and Frostbiter dwell in the
territory colonised by Cradle Of Filth where metal meets polka,
conjuring images of cossacks with tattoos and leathers. There are bits of
AC/DC lurking and there's definitely a hint of Status Quo in
the backing of title track Career Suicide, and nearly a sing-along chorus
or two in I Want Your Blood and Avalanche, the latter being a potential
pop-punk anthem in the making.
If you like your drums chugging, your guitars riff-heavy, your swearing
casual and your vocals belted in a baritone rasp, this could well be the
record for you. If not, well, you probably weren't going anywhere near
this anyway, were you. If you're unsure, it's definitely worth a punt. At
the very least it's over quickly.
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