Search - Alamo Race Track :: Black Cat John Brown

One of the best bands you've (probably) never heard of!

Tryavna | North Carolina | 07/24/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Alamo Race Track is one of those bands that, once discovered, I never know whether to introduce to all my friends or to keep to myself and savor privately. That's probably because the two defining characteristics of ART are their quirkiness and eclecticism. After all, how many of my friends are going to realize that "The Killing" is a meditation on the characters played by Elisha Cook Jr. and Marie Windsor in Stanley Kubrick's film of the same name? Or how many are going to get the joke inherent in the title of the song "Lee J. Cobb Is Screaming a Lot"? And then there's ART's sound, which has been compared variously to Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, Radiohead, The Strokes, and Peter Bjorn & John. Frankly, I don't think that ART sounds very much like any of those other bands -- except in passing moments. In fact, on the whole, ART doesn't really sound "like" anyone else, which is a large part of their charm. If anything, their eclecticism reminds me vaguely of the Belgian band dEUS. At different times, ART seems to channel blues ("Black Cat John Brown"), 90s Britrock ("The Northern Territory"), and John Barry's music for the early James Bond movies (the intro to "On the Beach").



Perhaps the reason ART seems simultaneously familiar and different is that they're Dutch. For one thing, lead singer Ralph Mulder's voice bears traces of an accent. It frequently takes on a sing-song quality that perfectly complements the band's bouncing bass and staccato guitar style (most noticeably on "The Northern Territory" and "My Heart"). Likewise, although all the songs are in English, there's an almost stream-of-consciousness obscurity to the lyrics, as if the band chooses words for their sound rather than meaning. More importantly, however, I find bands from "smaller" countries more apt to blend multiple musical influences, and that's very much on display here.



But it's not simply the exoticism of ART being foreign that appeals to me. They've got a knack for developing intricate structures around catchy hooks. The title track, for example, centers around a straightforward 4-bar phrase on acoustic guitar, but the band keeps it interesting by piling on multiple layers. (By the way, if "Black Cat John Brown" sounds familiar, it's probably because you ran across it on You Tube. ART earned a lot of buzz when an acoustic version of the song logged something like 200,000 views in two weeks.) Plus, the band's energy is extremely infectious. To put it bluntly, they can really rock, as "The Northern Territory" and "Lee J. Cobb Is Screaming a Lot" show. But they're just as good when in their darker, more melancholy moods, like "The Killing" and "Breaker-Breaker 1-2."



I discovered Alamo Race Track two years ago, when I came across their first album (BIRDS AT HOME, still unavailable in the U.S.) in an Amsterdam record shop. At the time, I thought they were an extremely interesting band that deserved a much wider audience. BLACK CAT JOHN BROWN is even better, and it would be criminal if they didn't get that audience now."