This album has sat in my 'to play' pile for a considerable amount of time. There are a number of reasons for this. I'm a busy man, after all, and I receive a lot of stuff to review while also working a regular job and knocking out the occasional blog, novel, whatever, not to mention actually having a life. But mostly, this kept getting put back down the pile because the name Big Daddy Love made me wince. There's just so much wrong with it as a name for a band. I'm not even going to start listing them. Even as a phrase, it's just bad. Suffice it to say that my expectation was set for an album that's plain awful.
I felt a thirty second glimmer of hope at the start. The simulated turning of the dial through endless radio stations all playing the same bad C&W that opens the album reminds me of Queens of the Stoneage's 'Songs for the Deaf' album and the links that run between the tracks. Then the first track proper, 'Peace of Mind' kicks in and it becomes apparent that this is no spoof.
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In fact, it's anything but humourous. With sincere, downbeat and heartfelt tales of hard times and anguish every three songs or so ('River Runs' is blues to the bone, and Matteo Recchio's guitar truly does weep), the bulk of 'To The Mountain' is an up-tempo, good-times, knees-up, honky tonkin' banjo-pluckin' countrified folked-up hoe-down. It's also bloody awful.
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