Chico States
I Saw a Galloping Horse Cover No Ground
self-released
Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a big record company honcho, the guy in charge of deciding whether a band gets signed, or if the follow-up album is a flop destined for the cut-out bins. Along comes an alt-country act from Maine called Chico States, and right off the bat, I’m intrigued. Cool name. Intriguing album title, too: I Saw A Galloping Horse Cover No Ground. “Alright, fellas. Let’s hear whatcha got…”
The opening song, “Doda,” jangles in with bright and chiming guitar, and I’m charmed. Drums kick in, we’re groovin’, and whoa, Nellie! The singer, Joe Barresi, he’s got it, one o’ them classic country voices, deep and twangy, yet all his own, unique. And hey, who’s that now? There’s a gal in this band, too? Hannah Barrett’s her name, and boy do they sound great together, like dark bourbon chocolate and that hippie peanut butter you gotta stir up everytime.
The chorus arrives: “Don’t want to know the nitty gritty / We’re hummin’ some Big Star song.” They dig Big Star! And certainly The Replacements, given the sly nod to “Alex Chilton.” Both excellent indications for, at the very least, critical praise. And yup, that’s a slice of melody from “September Gurls” nestled into the bridge. They’ve gone freakin’ meta!
“Mr. Barresi,” I declare, parking my cigar and rising from behind the big mahogany desk, hand extended, “you got yerself a record deal.”
Whereupon some besuited bean counter suddenly appears and interrupts. “With all due respect, sir, we mustn’t keep signing record deals without listening to the whole thing. Remember when you greenlighted Tusk solely on the strength of ‘Think About Me’? And that was a goddamn double album! Please, it’s been a brutal quarter and the board is getting all nervous and cokey again.”
I relent, and the next track, “Me and Kit Carruthers,” floats from the speakers built into the corner office’s mahogany-paneled walls. Pretty song, I think, dreamy and wistful, admiring the pedal steel (by Ben Rodgers, who’s all over the record, along with Darren Henry on a couple tracks) and those fine vocal harmonies again. A quick Google reminds me Carruthers was a character in the 1973 film Badlands, about a young couple (played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek) who go on a patricidal crime spree across the Upper Midwest. Another hip reference the critics will eat up! We’re onto something here…
“Green Gingham Dress” is up next. Another slow one. Also pretty. I swirl the Makers and ice in my rocks glass and puff on the Cuban some more while my mind drifts to Wussy’s “Yellow Cotton Dress” and the way Chuck Cleaver slips “motherfucker” in to devastating effect.
“Out On The Porch Swing” begins. Slow. Pretty. Barresi’s blowing a harmonica and sketching out another mis en scène from the Soft White Underbelly of wrecked America with its drunks and dopers and hitchhikers and hoboes. My attention is also beginning to wander again when the song stops dead midway. “I’m going downtown to watch the World Series,” Barresi resumes, softly, slowly, stepping on every syllable. “Any old bar downtown / Who’s going with me? / Who wants to go with me?” And then the thing explodes in a satisfying blast of electric guitar, pealing pedal steel, crashing drums and cymbals, bringing to mind my favorite local alt-country band of old, Dead End Armory, who likewise lurched from lethargic balladry to ear-splitting rock with aplomb.
“Creek Don’t Rise” and “Riding A Freight Train Across Farmington Bay” follow, and they’re fine, but frankly, I waiting for the tempo to pick up again, for another “Doda” to break the doldrums, and it ain’t comin’. I do like the honky-tonk song “A Dozen Beers,” especially the line, “me and you, we’re just blundering on through / a dozen beers ahead of most of the rest of the world,” and the last stanza, about ripping off “some dumb country star / just the harmonies, straight from the heart,” and how “as I’m walking out the door” casually becomes, a la Cleaver, “as I’m walking out the fucking door.” Tough sell as the second single, what with that cuss word, I figure, but the geeks at Pitchfork will appreciate it.
Following a version of the traditional “Silver Dagger” delivered at morphine-drip speed, though somewhat redeemed by a choice guitar solo, Galloping Horse ends with the elegiac “Ready For The River,” a grand coda that makes the most of those dynamic sonic shifts between country and crunchy. And Barresi sure can write. Lines like “Dusk all day, empty warm rain / a spilt bag of finish nails,” slay on their face, and with Barrett’s accompaniment, they transcend their sad setting and enter the immortal realm of art.
Which, my bean counter reminds me, doesn’t sell for shit. “And hell,” he cries, “that song is about suicide! You wanna get sued like Judas Priest during the Satanic Panic? Endangered old-growth lumber doesn’t grow on trees, ya know!” Whereupon we all — band, bean counter, I — exchange quizzical looks as the absurdity sinks in.
“Fuck it,” I finally say, rising again from my leather chair. “I like this record. A lot. We’ll release ‘Doda’ as the first single, see if we can get y’all booked on one of the late-night shows — maybe even Drew; she’s still kinda edgy — let all that worthless critical praise pile up and get the show on the road to Live Nation venues from coast to coast!”
Whereupon Chico States rises as one and walks out the fucking door.
