Jason & The Scorchers
Halcyon Times

It must have been eight or nine years since the last official release of Jason Ringenberg in the Jason & The Scorchers configuration. This comeback album is a pleasant series of excellently collected occasions for a revival that doesn’t reek of much ado about nothing. I felt the need for it. The ensemble comes from Nashville, and that alone is enough to understand that the tall hats and long hair belong to arms divided between bucolic feats and the production of high-alcohol content music for cowboys. Which today sounds current and produced as the god of the fields commands, transporting a world that can sometimes seem stubborn and backward, perfectly in line with the era we are living in. In short, this Halcyon Times is a 2010 album in every respect.

The thing that surprised me the most is the freshness of the music proposed by Ringenberg & co, absolutely vital, naturally tied to its traditional country style, but also, as usual, muddied by the rebellious roots that have always characterized the works of our group: punk. It is, therefore, a cowpunk work in every way, thrashing around angrily and gently between harshness and sweetness, between speed and tempos that look to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, between a great desire to still be present and the need to say "here" in every sense. Jason's voice fits like two ice cubes in a Southern Comfort with a twist of orange peel, always clean and powerful, in a certain sense honest, transporting the biggest vocals of Tennessee's capital towards Joey Ramone. There's little to do with the psychobilly genre, but at times you can taste its acidic and obsessive reverberations. But these are nuances. The discussion articulates along the axis of sound power that doesn't aim to cover what some malicious people prophesied as the lack of ideas, but only to strengthen an album where guitars, bass, and drums are interpreters of an articulated level of composition. The linearity of middle U.S.A. melodies is reinforced by a rhythm section that loves to inlay every single passage, enjoys chiseling scalar riffs that are often wild, and indulges in the decisive picking of ballads that do not seek tears but only want to enhance the self-esteem value of a sentimental cowboy. However, there is no need to fear: the ballads are really reduced to a minimum and are always followed by rousing songs that ignite, throw the stone, and gather many concentric circles of appreciation. It's an album that makes you dance and wiggle, makes you want to drink a lot, grab a guitar and sing at the top of your lungs. Halcyon Times is a work that makes you smile inwardly when you catch the blues, Springsteenian hints, the references to people's movements, and the perfectly evoked chromatisms from a cover at the sound level.

In summary, a great album, which enters my personal podium of this crappy year in which joy made an appearance at the last minute precisely thanks to the reliable genuineness and certainty of this little opus for a possible wine fraternity.