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.
