Review: Ha Ha Tonka – “Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South”
Roots rock is like a chess game in its late stages. Not in the sense that the genre’s ever going to end (hopefully), but that there are only so many moves that you can make. Most of the time, it comes down to personality: Drive-By Truckers have the gritty, intelligent Skynyrd thing, while The Old 97′s have their lyrically flavorful lead singer and melancholic backing vocals. Missouri’s Ha Ha Tonka bring a literate, dark edge to their sound. The organs creep along like ghosts, and lead singer Brian Roberts sings like the ghoul leading the charge. The effect is a murky creep: there aren’t many extended solos to be found. They don’t have time for that when none of the songs surpass the four minute mark. Everything runs on the momentum of the sound.
Songs like “Hold My Feet to the Fire” wail and stagger, drunk off their own threatening nature. The heavy tracks aren’t barn burners, but they manage a kind of midtempo explosiveness all the same. The quieter songs are hollow and forlorn, emphasizing the empty space before that wall of riffage and kick drum returns, always seemingly more driven than you remembered. “The Horse in Motion,” in particular, relents on the dread a bit before bringing the hellfire back to a great effect. They show a talent for sudden shifts in tempo like that, and it helps vary the songs and set each of them apart from one another.
The second half of the album isn’t quite as enthralling as the first, though. Vocals switch over to Brett Anderson a couple of times, and without Roberts’ thin vibrato, some gravitas is lost. Without his lead, things take a little more of a Neil Young slant. Out of this bunch, “World Climbing” stands out for having slightly stronger hooks than the rest of the songs, but the darkened mood of “What Shepherds of These Hills” and “Horse in Motion” is missed, mainly because they did it so well. To their credit, everything here is still of a piece, and it never feels like an entirely different band. They’ve got a distinctive style, and it seems to have settled into their souls no matter what they do.
A newcomer might think Ha Ha Tonka, by name alone, would be a funny novelty band. They’re not. (Winds up they’re named after a state park. The more you know!) Like Drive-By Truckers, they give a fun name to some serious music (not to be confused with dour or depressing music, mind you). And you might imagine, with a title like Novel Sounds from the Nouveau South, that these are hipster brats who think they’re cleverer than they are. Again, they’re not, but they do take some inspiration from literature. Authors pop up a couple times – Dostoyevsky in “Close Every Valve to Your Bleeding Heart,” and Theoreau in “Thoreau in the Woods.” Even then, I think the best outside-of-music comparison for Ha Ha Tonka’s Novel Sounds from the Nouveau South is the classic cowboy-in-hell oater High Plains Drifter. As in: the fuck if I remember the middle parts, but some guys got shot in a barbershop. It was a western, and Clint Eastwood killed a bunch of people.
Ha Ha Tonka:
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Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!Email this Author | All posts by Jere
