Review Under Two: Constancy by The Roseline

Review Under Two is a segment of The Marinade with Jason Earle podcast where host Jason Earle reviews a work he finds inspiring in under two minutes.

Our Review Under Two for Episode 100 with singer-songwriter Ryan Anderson focuses on the excellent new record Constancy by The Roseline.

The Roseline’s Constancy is a slice of pumpkin pie as imagined by a cutting edge chef. Reminiscent of bands like Whiskeytown and The Flying Burrito Brothers but insistent on tackling familiar themes and exploring comfortable sounds from an original perspective. 

Constancy is a hopeful record. Its characters do the messy work of looking back and examining the changes that need to be made. They acknowledge the messes in their lives and refuse to be defined by them. They decide to persevere instead. 

The backbone of the album is a tune called “Hunker Down.” It is a perfect encapsulation of the record’s prevailing theme. Constancy’s characters are in varying stages of getting to know themselves, with those in “Hunker Down” getting as close to self-actualization as one could dream. 

“All I wanna do is mostly nothing/Hunker down with you and try to tame/All my pecadillos and bad habits/Lay ‘em to waste”

“Hunker Down” is the excavation of life as a work in progress. It digs up the days of “flirting with service industry women” and “spending a shift’s worth of wages or more” in one night- those floundering moments of foolish youth that feel like they are necessary rites of passage. Maybe they are. Maybe the big takeaway should be that our bad habits and mistakes are necessary to develop constancy as a skill. 

The narrator in “Hunker Down,” has overcome the false urgency of a night wasted to experience the beauty in doing “mostly nothing” with people you love. 

We could all use a healthy dose of constancy, and The Roseline is an able ambassador for fortitude in the face of a precarious global landscape.

Review Under Two: Van Plating's The Way Down

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Review Under Two is a segment of The Marinade with Jason Earle podcast where host Jason Earle reviews a work he finds inspiring in under two minutes.

Our Review Under Two for Episode 98 with singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino focuses on Van Plating’s record The Way Down.

Van Plating’s forthcoming record The Way Down is a top self bourbon served neat on the back deck at twilight. Its complexities are immediately apparent but still best enjoyed with slow, rapt attention and an awareness of their context.

Plating spent her 20s playing and singing in indie rock bands. When her band Pemberley broke up she decided to take some time off from touring and making records. Then life happened and a little time off turned into years.

Once the need to create, the pang that pushes one to make beautiful things, enters the system it never leaves. Like a blood flute quietly doing its work, the need to make art will rear its head even decades after the bug first arrives. 

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Plating’s 2019 self-titled record was the first manifestation of the creative bug pushing itself from the cocoon. The Way Down (set for release on 11/19/21) is where the butterfly takes flight. A decade of reflection and growth baked into a collection of songs that celebrates the person Plating has become and is becoming. 

So often we think of creative change in terms of rebound or redemption. An artist who overcame addiction or was left for dead by the industry. In the case of Van Plating’s The Way Down, the change is not a return from oblivion. It is a leap back into a life that was always there percolating just below the surface of a “normal” existence.

The spiritual centerpoint of the record is the final track “Oxygen.” It is a song about the loss and recovery of love. Its imagery is stark and powerful, with the ocean setting the stage for an examination of what it means to lose something essential and recover it through perseverance. 

“Whose side are you on? My wings are made to soar.”

“Oxygen” is the second song on the record to mention wings- the appearance of which nods both to Van Plating’s complicated relationship with the church and her determination to rise above the noise. Who should make art? How and when should it be made? Throughout The Way Down Plating decides the answers to those questions on her terms. 

“Oxygen” is a fitting closer to the record. With little more than three chords and an acoustic guitar, Plating makes apparent that while she may have had a hard time breathing at points in her life, on this record the creative airways are clear.

Review Under Two: Nathan Bell's Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here)

Photo by Keith Belcher

The novel It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis was published in 1935. It tells the story of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrop, a demagogue who is elected as President of the United States and subsequently seizes authoritarian power. Winthrop is in over his head, an unlikely populist juggernaut, and not smart enough to hold the job. Sound familiar? Almost feels like it can in fact happen here, doesn’t it?

Like its partial namesake, Nathan Bell’s Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here) is an unfortunately timeless piece of art. Necessary in its import. Heartbreaking in its relevance. 

Written over the course of several years and delayed in its release by the COVID-19 pandemic, Red, White, and American Blues has a transportative quality. The tension of recording in 2019, a stress that is often forgotten due to subsequent events, feels immediately present to the listener. While the record feels like 2019, it also feels like 2015 and 2021 and 1935, because Nathan Bell lives in the present and he has lived.

Lived in the sense of raised a family. Lived in the sense of worked a 9 to 5 job. Lived in the sense of come home from work and put on the ball game. In the sense of read all the books and listened to all the records. He has a poet’s eye with an everyman’s heart. Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here) is the self-aware expression of a life well-lived. It is what every songwriter seeks- an honest expression of where we have been and where we are now. 

The album is musically sparse which allows Bell’s command of storytelling and imagery to shine. Bell takes on America’s gun obsession (twice), “Buzz”-Windrop-come-to-life Donald Trump, and more that ails this country. He also celebrates everyday folks, pays respect to his late father, and examines mortality with an optimistic eye. 

Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here) would be a powerhouse of a record if the vocals were Bell’s alone. The contributions of Aubrie Sellers, Regina McCrary, and Patty Griffin take songs that stand on their own two feet and launch them into rarified air. 

The collapse of a free society can, and very well may, happen here. It won’t happen for lack of artists like Nathan Bell turning a critical eye on American society.

Lived in the sense of raised a family. Lived in the sense of worked a 9 to 5 job. Lived in the sense of come home from work and put on the ball game. In the sense of read all the books and listened to all the records. He has a poet’s eye with an everyman’s heart. Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here) is the self-aware expression of a life well-lived. It is what every songwriter seeks- an honest expression of where we have been and where we are now. 

The album is musically sparse which allows Bell’s command of storytelling and imagery to shine. Bell takes on America’s gun obsession (twice), “Buzz”-Windrop-come-to-life Donald Trump, and more that ails this country. He also celebrates everyday folks, pays respect to his late father, and examines mortality with an optimistic eye. 

Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here) would be a powerhouse of a record if the vocals were Bell’s alone. The contributions of Aubrie Sellers, Regina McCrary, and Patty Griffin take songs that stand on their own two feet and launch them into rarified air. 

The collapse of a free society can, and very well may, happen here. It won’t happen for lack of artists like Nathan Bell turning a critical eye on American society.

The album is musically sparse which allows Bell’s command of storytelling and imagery to shine. Bell takes on America’s gun obsession (twice), “Buzz”-Windrop-come-to-life Donald Trump, and more that ails this country. He also celebrates everyday folks, pays respect to his late father, and examines mortality with an optimistic eye. 

Red, White, and American Blues (it can happen here) would be a powerhouse of a record if the vocals were Bell’s alone. The contributions of Aubrie Sellers, Regina McCrary, and Patty Griffin take songs that stand on their own two feet and launch them into rarified air. 

The collapse of a free society can, and very well may, happen here. It won’t happen for lack of artists like Nathan Bell turning a critical eye on American society.

A Series of Essays on The Marinade's Favorite Albums of 2020 | Roll On by Water Liars

This is the second in a series of short essays looking back at the records we loved from 2020. The series focuses on how each album impacted Jason Earle’s life this year.

Few records rise to all occasions. There are songs for dancing. Those for drinking. Music for lounging. Road trip music. Songs for fucking. Sometimes an album overlaps in a couple of those places. Other records remain siloed. 

Then there are albums like Roll On by Water Liars. The rare artistic effort achieving universality of mood. An album for any moment.

You get home from one of those days for which you were unprepared. The kind where dominoes seem to resist gravity.

You just got a promotion, have been feeling good and taking care of yourself- eating right and exercising. You want to rock. Bounce up and down and sing at the top of your lungs. 

It’s Saturday. The rest of the family is out doing family things. They let you sleep in because you are a lucky mother fucker with a bad ass family. You enjoy the luxury of a slow cup of coffee sitting by the window and watching your world awaken.

Roll On does what its title track promises- carrying the listener through whatever life presents. Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s writing spans a lyrical spectrum from epic ruminations on love and perseverance to sparse, abstract nods to anxiety. The imagery is vivid. The mood in each song is set. 

“Down Colorado I followed your shadow/And credit card receipts/The cocaine receding, the western sky bleeding/The mountains in relief/I never deserve you but how could I earn you/When stone ain’t made to bleed?”

On the whole I have been one of the lucky ones in the year 2020. The pandemic slowed me down and made me rethink my day-to-day. I was able to refocus on the relationships that mattered and distance myself from those that were taking more than they were adding. I stood up and advocated for myself. I fought the right battles and let go of the other stuff. 

There were personal and professional challenges, both self-created and as the result of outside forces. It was not a perfect effort but again, relative to most folks I was fortunate. 

July and August was a tough stretch of the year. COVID-19 cases were climbing. Schools weighing whether to re-open despite not having the resources to keep people safe. The 2020 election loomed as the potential final nail in the coffin of our eroded democracy. 

Roll On was delivered right on time. The record was made in 2015 but released in the middle of this year. It may not have reached my ears in 2015. Hell, even if it did I may not have needed it so bad five years ago. Roll On was there for what turned out to be a second half full of hope in 2020. 

I kept coming back to the record, bingeing it and finding new nuggets during each listening session. I also went back into the Water Liars catalog and those of its individual members. I found comfort in the atmosphere of Water Liars. Roll On was a steady friend and a willing partner in the second half of 2020.

Album Review | American Aquarium's Lamentations

It feels like yesterday American Aquarium released Things Change, a record begging the listener to live in its characters. A man consoling his partner who devastatingly recognizes the “world is on fire.” Someone coming to the hard realization they are better off confronting their addictions. Characters wrestling with the unconscionable and somehow making sense of it. 

Things Change was strong enough that new realizations continue to bubble to the surface. My initial reaction to the news that American Aquarium was headed into the studio with Shooter Fucking Jennings was, “I get you have a lot to say BJ, but we ain’t done processing the last one.”

Things Change was released in 2018. Since then, the pace of the real world has accelerated to warp speed while the power of American Aquarium’s Things Change has kept pace. When BJ Barham removed the governor from his songwriting motor several years ago, the result was an ascendancy to the upper echelon of his generation of tunesmiths. 

Lamentations, American Aquarium’s latest release straddles the raucous honky tonk rock of early American Aquarium and the more socially conscious nature of Barham’s last collection of songs. The themes are familiar - hard work, substance abuse and sobriety, the South, sad stories. With Lamentations, Barham has taken another huge step forward in songcraft. 

As we have come to expect, the album opens with a kick-in-the-teeth tune that comes to a soaring, anthemic coda. These things usually need time to marinate before we declare superlatives. Nonetheless, the title track is Barham’s finest songwriting. “Me + Mine (Lamentations)” sets the tone for an album full of scorching hot songs that feel like they were recorded at an American Aquarium show somewhere in Texas, the band’s home away from home. 

If you have seen them there, you know what I mean. American Aquarium always brings it regardless of venue. BJ and the boys (this lineup and those past) are professionals who take their craft seriously. But, the band is fueled by the fervor of its fans and folks in Texas take it up a notch.

More than any other studio release, Lamentations captures the spirit of American Aquarium’s greatest live shows- a testament to the touch of producer Shooter Jennings. Shooter seems to be the bridge between early, raw American Aquarium and the renaissance that began with Burn. Flicker. Die.

Most importantly, Barham has taken another stride in his examination of the South. We are living in a time where a generation of southern writers are taking on the South with a warm demanding hand. Folks like the Bitter Southerner, Jason Isbell, Drive-by Truckers, Lee Bains III- the list is long and growing. A group of people who are not content to make excuses for the way things are and the way things were. 

“I believe in a better south,” Barham sings on the album’s eighth track. It is a tune showcasing his acute ability to use critical observation as a source of hope. Hope for a better South, a better nation, a more honest examination of the ills that plague us collectively and individually. Lamentations is more than a new American Aquarium record. It’s a manifesto of the power of our best instincts.

Album Review | Reed Foehl's Lucky Enough

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“We’ve all got holes to fill/Them holes are all that’s real” -Townes Van Zandt

Reed Foehl’s excellent album “Lucky Enough” (available 2/1/19) takes the listener on an existential journey to fill life’s holes. Written at an impossibly difficult time in Foehl’s life, while he was caring for his mother who was battling cancer, Foehl would be understood for writing a melancholy record. Lucky Enough ducks expectation. It does not feel melancholy. It feels settled. Not resigned, but at peace with life’s challenges and tribulations.

The common current running through Lucky Enough is acceptance. Going out and searching for something to make us whole. The album is sequenced as the tale of a person navigating existence, learning lessons, failing and growing, and finally finding a place and a person who fills in the holes.

Lucky Enough kicks off with the infectious melody of lovers “Stealing Starlight,” lyrics about the simple pleasures of life. The “taste of Basil Hayden’s” on the tongue. Footprints washed away in the sand. Sleeping in together. Stealing starlight.

But, as restless spirits are wont to do, our narrator takes off cross country clicking through “American Miles.” It’s a cinematic tune a la Bon Iver. A restive tale that acknowledges all the narrator loves is all he knows.

Who knows what we are going to encounter on that road; that American road, the one serving as a metaphor for our life’s journey. The journey is long yet it feels at times like it is flying by too quickly to grasp. It “takes a long time to make old friends,” our narrator tells us. And, really, we are just “charting the courses of carousel horses,” lost in this day-to-day.

Sometimes we feel we should be “on an Island” like the protagonist in the opening track to Lucky Enough’s side B. He admonishes us to remember that “You don’t know me till you can walk in my shoes.” But an island is no place for a battle.

Our struggles can seem so enormous yet really we ultimately “running out of nothing left to do.” A regiment of blinding agents keeps us moored to our carousel. None of us on our own really knows what we are doing. We need each other to navigate this world.

Foehl employs an almost whimsical feel to help his narrator work through this existential angst on the heavy yet fun “I Wish I Knew.” Ultimately, the heady musings of Lucky Enough come to the realization that what we all need is someone or some group of souls to fill in our holes. We can only do so much on our own. Once we have rambled the miles, made and lost friends, endured the day-to-day, and run out of nothing left to do we are faced with ourselves. Our strengths, our insecurities, our charms, our anxieties- all of it needs the tempering influence of people we love.

Lucky Enough ends with the arresting “Color Me In.” “What will you do with me, my darlin’?” Foehl’s narrator asks, followed by an entreaty to come and lay with him, to relish the moment they have together. Together they can make it. No, together they will make it. What may not be possible alone is attainable with someone there to fill the holes.

-Jason Earle