When River City Extension‘s Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anger came out in 2012, I liked it, and then I liked it quite a bit. Partly the band’s enthusiasm was infectious, and partly their energetic live show sold me even more on the group. I sat for much of the show in the back, enjoyed the opener, and somewhat stuck to the floor in a venue that rarely gets as raucous now. It was a good night and it might have rained a little and I was a hooked fan.
I was optimistic that the follow-up Deliverance would produce just as much pleasure. The band had a knack for more-complex-than-they-seem songs full of guts and surprising lyricism and even now with fewer members than should have plenty of sound. I was ready for more. I was disappointed.
I didn’t want to be. Maybe it was the flight. Maybe it was too many flights with their delays and cancellations and too little sleep and too much work and too much cold and the stress over a heat pump dying in the snow.
I wanted to like whatever this band did, so I devised a new challenge: The Kitchen Boogie Test. I hate to cook, or to be in the kitchen, so if an album could make me move while managing too many pots, it would earn some points (ballads need not apply, though River City Extension can do them well). Deliverance passed the test.
But not entirely. The first three songs smack a little much of ’70s AM radio, but the spunk’s still there and if there’s a flaw, it’s simply that the band tries to do too much. The band previously filled up it’s Americana-based rock with a rash of well-arranged instruments. Here there are more individual moments, but they aren’t always necessary. Still, the band knows how to write and play good songs.
Which is why I keep hoping with each new listen that they’ll keep it up for the full album. Frontman Joe Michelini speaks as forthrightly as ever, and he can be surprising and insightful, as when he sings, “What Deliverance I’ve found that the world is spinning ’round without me” on “Deliverance Pt. 2″. Something’s missing, though.
This was a band that fit in well with 2012 but still deserved their own space. They were gritter than Mumford & Sons and more off-the-rails (in a good way) than the Avett Brothers. The band was bursting with ideas and juice and instruments, but could spin it all around Michelini’s emotional concerns. Now they’re just a good band and that should be enough but it isn’t.
“White Blackmail” sounds like a River City Extension song, but it sounds like other things, too, and it sounds like a song that’s not essential enough after a three-year wait since “Point of Surrender”. The band’s tight, they’re fine, the songs are decent. They shouldn’t be decent, and maybe those missing three people could help the remaining quintet play a tuba and then drop it down a stairwell or something.
Or this record should be enough. Repeated listens give you a chance to think about the band’s use of dynamics (notably on “Indian Summer”) and pacing. “Deliverance Pt. 2”, pretty enough to stop a hallway passerby, grants the album a steady shift in tone, that’s as fitting as it is delicate. But they’re tasteful. The songs provide comfort, which counts, but they don’t demand enough.
It might not be entirely fair to judge an album in light of its predecessor (but it’s a little fair), especially if the new album does different things. Fans other than me will likely be satisfied, and maybe I’m revealing too much of the subjectivity in my listening, too much of the hard winter yet to end. Fair or not, I want more, particularly out of a band that’s already proven its capabilities. River City Extension almost gets there, and that’s what bothers me.