Dorks And Losers

Hail­ing from Cincin­nati, Ohio, The Green­hornes — made up of Craig Fox (lead singer, gui­tar), Jack Lawrence (bass) and Patrick Keeler (drums) — might just be the sec­ond com­ing of The White Stripes. Heav­ily influ­enced by rock roy­al­ties like The Bea­t­les, The Byrds and The Doors, The Green­hornes strive to make rock sim­ple again. No flash, just down and dirty clas­sic rock. The lat­est album Sewed Souls is a com­pi­la­tion of tracks from all of The Green­hornes’ pre­vi­ous albums: Gun For You (1999), The Green­hornes (2001), Dual Mono (2002), East Grand Blues (2005). Any­one who missed the band’s pre­vi­ous works will do well to pick this up.

Sewed Souls is a quick follow-up to the band’s bril­liant East Grand Blues EP, which was pro­duced by Bren­dan Ben­son. Included from EGB are tracks inspired by Step­pen­wolf (“Pat­tern Skies”) and a mix of The Doors and Billy Idol (“Shel­ter Of Your Arms”). Fox has an uncanny resem­blance to both Jim Mor­ri­son and Billy Idol in “Shel­ter Of Your Arms” — being both force­ful, yet steady — in this fresh psy­che­delic experience.

It usu­ally takes bands years to find their voice and their spirit, but lis­ten­ing to their ear­lier tracks helps you under­stand how focused the group was. The band’s ear­li­est album Gun For You can be seen the same way as East Grand Blues in that the band’s sound is con­sis­tently rock, and rarely any­thing else. The band’s lone ballad-like track is the impas­sioned Rolling Stones throw­back “Hold Me.” Rock gets a lot of inspi­ra­tion from blues and that doesn’t escape The Green­hornes with the dejection-filled “I’ve Been Down” and the guitar-heavy “Too Much Sorrow.”

The best word to describe The Green­hornes is mel­low. The band doesn’t try to make rock music; the band just does. Lis­ten­ing to “Don’t Come Run­ning To Me” or “Stay Away Girl” and you can feel the smooth atmos­phere that GH likes to cre­ate and immerse itself in. No bet­ter song exem­pli­fies that bet­ter than “There Is An End” — fea­tur­ing Holly Golightly for the Jim Jar­musch 2005 film, Bro­ken Flow­ers — for its laid-back 60s feel.

What sets The Green­hornes apart is the band’s abil­ity to cap­ture the feel and the joy of rock music. Each song resem­bles a dif­fer­ent band, say it be The Kinks or The Zom­bies. To some, the band might bor­der on imi­ta­tion or rep­e­ti­tion, but lis­ten­ing to Sewed Souls and the band’s true tal­ent is discovered.

See “Pat­tern Skies” Quick­Time video — here.

[photo via Shock­ing Flamingo]
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Track list:

1. It’s Not Real
2. Pat­tern Skies
3. Lies
4. I’ve Been Down
5. Hold Me
6. Shadow Of Grief
7. No More
8. There Is An End
9. Shame & Mis­ery
10. Can’t Stand Stand It (Alter­nate Ver­sion)
11. Good Times
12. Too Much Sor­row
13. Don’t Come Run­ning To Me
14. Sat­isfy My Mind
15. It Returns
16. Stay Away Girl
17. Shel­ter Of Your Arms
18. The End Of The Night
19. Lovin’ in The Sun

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