Whenever a band is advertised as a country act, I get nervous. While I love classic acts like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, and country-skirting genres like bluegrass and folk are among my favorites, the average country radio hit is more likely than almost anything else to elicit a cringe. Joe Whyte Band, therefore, went to work from the bottom of a pretty deep hole.
That said, I enjoyed the show. Turns out NYC country means hipster Americana posturing, something I've been semi-guiltily consuming in mass quantities since the beginning of my collegiate experience. While contrived identification with our parents' or grandparents' era working class is an odd cultural contrivance, someone once said that all art comes from someone loving something so much that they wanted there to be more of it. From that latter, more generous perspective, Joe Whyte's NYC origins are merely an easy liberation from the annoying twang and unconsciously derivative songwriting that makes me despise most country, and for that reason this is a band that I can enjoy, even if only as background music to what turned out to be a better-than-expected evening with friends. By the time the band left the stage for Joe's solo acoustic closer, the hole they'd been working out of had been left far behind.
No comments:
Post a Comment