Sunday, October 14, 2018

Review: 'This American Blues' by Ford Madox Ford


Chip and Tony Kinman are the founding member of The Dils, whom you may recall from their poppy punk classic “Mr. Big” and their prominent role in the unforgettable Battle of the Bands sequence of Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke. Forty years later, the Kinmans have founded a new enterprise named after the British writer who penned The Good Soldier and established The English Review. Don’t expect literary aspirations from Ford Madox Ford the band, though (Chip: vocals and guitar; Tony: producing). On their debut LP, This American Blues, the lyrics are almost defiantly simplistic and repetitious, though frustrations with the music industry and the near extinction of Rock & Roll are clear as Chip turns lines such as “Look what they’ve done to my song, ma”, “There’s no rockin’ tonight”, and “images of my generation fade away” into mantras.

For the most part, the hard guitar arrangements, sharp hooks, and Chip Kinman’s anglophile vocals keep these songs soaring, though when things get too stripped down or lean too heavily on the title genre, as they do on the trite “Let’s Work Together” or the bluesy first half of  “If That’s How You Feel”, This American Blues can get a bit pedestrian. Fortunately, most of the songs are dense and fierce enough that everything clicks, whether Kinman sneers through the rip-snorting “I’m Haunted” and “Images of My Generation”, channels Oasis in the hazy “How Does Your Horn Sound Today”, or eulogizes all of the death surrounding Warhol’s Factory in the groovy “Immediate Nico”. This American Blues arrives from Porterhouse Records on blue vinyl.

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