With a double-edged title referring to both style and content, the Chicago band return with a strong, 21-track double album of country-edged music brimful with fine melodies, melancholy but sharply pointed lyrics, and a throwback to Jeff Tweedy’s early-90s alt-country days with Uncle Tupelo. Largely acoustic, there’s a bittersweet tone throughout encapsulated in the title track: “I love my country like a little boy / Red, white, and blue/ I love my country, stupid and cruel,” and there are also echoes of mid-late 70s Dylan here from the rolling piano and drawl of opener I Am My Mother, to the folkier Ambulance. Other standouts include Tired of Taking It Out on You, and A Lifetime to Find, and the beautiful intertwining guitars on Bird Without A Tail / Base of My Skull. Meanwhile mid-point Many Worlds is an 8-minute long, slow, piano-based contemplation of the night sky, equally beautiful and languorous, while Story To Tell adopts a late-Beatles/John Lennon slow piano style with added slide guitar. Please Be Wrong and Country Song Upside-Down both typify the catchy, warm, rustic sound of the album, bright guitars alongside dark, melancholy lyrics. Overall, an album that might feel unvarying and long, but strangely welcoming, fire-side, and comforting, something to wrap up warm in. Out on dBpm Records.
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