You wouldn't guess from this record that Korby Lenker's other musical career is in a bluegrass band. What we have here is a hybrid pop music: a little bit countrified, acoustic in places, frequently quite rocky, and, most successfully, quite soulful. Korby's voice isn't robust enough to really belt out the rock numbers, tending to sound more like a confidential whisper than a full-throated bellow, but he can sure do the soul thing. On the slower numbers where he draws out the notes he reminds me of Steve Dawson in Dolly Varden or even, at a pinch, of the Neville brothers.
In common with many contemporary American songwriters, Korby's happy to experiment with song structure. We don't get the sweet and easy flow to a song that the likes of Slaid Cleaves seem to be able to knock out in their sleep, but rather melodies that seem to take unexpected directions and rhythms that break step and change pace, mid-song. This seems particularly evident on the rock numbers with choruses that pause mid-flow, Counting Crows style. It irritates me, but it doesn't seem to have done the Crows any harm. Lyrically, the mood is pretty downbeat overall: a man dealing with doubts, wondering what this life is all about. Even in "Cedars of Lebanon", an autobiographical celebration of the church singing that got him fired up about music in the first place, there is a holding back as if to point up the melancholy hiding behind the joy in life, and he asks:
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"do you think that I sing nice/are my vices worth the price/of pretty music?".
Far and away the most fun track on the album is the clinching closer, the "Myspace Song", one minute twenty seconds of Chuck Berry-ish fuzz-box raucousness celebrating the joys of the latest fun internet thingy. The other stand-out track is Angel of Mercy, an achingly soulful slow song with the chorus:
"send me an angel of mercy/comfort me with a beautiful lie/ sing me to sleep with an old southern melody/looking out for a true friend of mine."
The music throughout is inventive, but uncluttered - guitars, drums and organ with a little lap steel here and there, but lots of care in the production has produced plenty of atmosphere from these straightforward elements. "King of Hearts" has lots of interesting stuff going on without quite catching fire, but the man is thoughtful and serious about his art, and I'm sure the best is yet to come.
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