Search - Cub Country :: Stay Poor Stay Happy

This is the real deal...

Brooklyn Cowboy | Brooklyn, NY | 11/17/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Cub Country's Stay Poor/Stay Happy earns the best compliment I can give a record--I fell in love with it, driving down a dark highway in the middle of the night with it playing at top volume. Equal parts alt.country and rootsy alt.rock, it moves from tales of lost love to vignettes of wistful hope with taut, inventive lyrics.



In "The Salt Islands," frontman Jeremy Chatelain takes a wistful look back at an old, dead affair without a trace of sentimentality: "There's a swimming hole/down by the gravel pit/that people dare to jump in/So you went first/And when I took my turn/you were gone/without a trace or sound/and I swam on/Preteding I was fine." and then moves into the graceful chorus: "History's no mystery/where it stopped from you to me/There are never words left to explain/How my days turn to nights/and you disappeared from sight/And I lost all of your things along the way."



There's elements of Gram Parsons and the Replacements and some Stones like (think Sticky Fingers) guitar work on this record, but it's all put together with grace and an affection for melody that makes Cub Country it's own animal.



Buy this record. You will not be sorry."