| GARY ALLEN'S BEST SONG IN THE WORLD |
| Cousin Lovers |
| Here's To The Horse Players |
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| Cousin Lovers from Los Angeles California Instrumentation Tim Ferguson-Mandolin/Guitar/Lead Vocals/Songwriter Julie Pusch-Fiddle/Back-up Vocals Dean Thomas-Guitar/Back-up Vocals The Cousin Lovers have been warping the hearts and minds of Los Angeles, one honky-tonk at a time. How to describe it? One part corn liquor, one part safety pin, a side of chitlings, and a dash of top hat and spats, occasionally lifting up on hydraulics and rolling around on 24" spinner rims. Improbable? Well, according to biomechanical engineers, a bumblebee can't fly. But there it is, flying, and watching the Cousin Lovers play is a similar experience. Grounded in a rock-deep foundation of traditional American music, and steeped in its members' Southern and rural roots, this band nevertheless expands the boundaries of what a three-minute pop song can --and should-- sound like. No one captures the punk possibilities of a bluegrass instrumental like the Cousin Lovers. And, as the name would lead you to expect, humor plays something of a role (live shows have been known to wind up with lead vocalist Tim Ferguson delivering Mickey Avalon's "My Dick" in the persona of a deranged Huell Howser). But their humor, force, drive, and instrumental virtuosity sometimes overshadow their tender, wistful side. Ferguson's lyrics capture, in his estimation, "a Southern diaspora lost in noir and Bukowski bars, inhabiting some sort of vanished Bunker Hill of the mind... you know, the Angels Flight cars going endlessly up and down the night as a Carter Family song creaks all wretched out a window. Or something like that." While, again, the handle "Cousin Lovers" might lead one to expect humor of the Elvis-UFOs-'n-trailer-parks variety, Ferguson (a Georgia native) instead has wit. Their sad and funny "Waltz" seems as if Gram Parsons' "Sin City" were somehow given a rewrite by Morrissey. "The Hopeful Massé" manages to mash-up Pavement lyrics, pool-shark slang, and Ralph Stanley into a coherent, beautiful whole. And that's just in the first verse. "The DECLINE AND FALL, In Which Women-Folk Are Overly Dramatic" rebuffs a borderline-bipolar gal by mockingly casting her in a sort of spooky, swampy antebellum dream-movie, where she is alternately Bette Davis in Jezebel and Dickens' Miss Haversham. If you listen closely, you will also hear in this song little Easter eggs of musical quotes, including --I swear to God-- both Bernard Herrmann and Arctic Monkeys. Intellectual stuff. Intricate, delicate stuff, the kind that could easily fall apart. But what holds it together is the band's prowess and chemistry. Guitarist Dean Thomas plays with such fire and deep Southern authenticity (he's originally from Kentucky), that the sophisticated, even bizarre, limbs he sometimes goes out on never seem to break. A solo of his is often so steaming with hillbilly brimstone that even the best guitarists might not notice that half of it was in a freakish auxiliary augmented scale made entirely of whole steps. Julie Pusch's fiddle playing is lush and dramatic, and reflects her extensive classical training. But when the Cousin Lovers enter their aggressive, testosterone-soaked displays of musical one-upmanship, her raw and blistering solos tend to dispatch any image one might have of her as some pretty, shy conservatory dork. Tim Ferguson's mandolin style veers between Hubert Sumlin, Tiny Moore, Django Reinhardt, and Bill Monroe (albeit Bill Monroe on meth) so seamlessly it takes a while to digest the scope of it. When he "gets on that fast train," as Bill Monroe used to call it, his right hand is literally a blur. But most arresting are their vocals. The Cousin Lovers seem to be in conscious rebellion against other indie-country (and indie-anything) bands, a frightening number of whom apparently regard bad singing as a badge of honor. At some point somebody decided that people who want to sing well belonged on American Idol, while people who have an artistic point of view should never get caught singing particularly hard. The Cousin Lovers refute this emphatically and beautifully. They use the range and power of their voices to deepen meaning rather than cover up triteness, which is of course as God intended it. And this is what ultimately makes the Cousin Lovers special and worthwhile. Don't let the name fool you. They mean it. www.myspace/the cousin lovers www.sonicbids.com/TheCousinLovers |
| GARY ALLEN'S BEST SONG IN THE WORLD |
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