Forget Kings of Leon. (Well, momentarily at least.) Between his efforts with Deer Tick, Middle Brother and Diamond Rugs, John McCauley is single handedly keeping boozy indie rock alive. Problem is, you might not want to know what he’s doing with the other hand. True, Caleb Followill did famously lay bare his erectile dysfunctions on Aha Shake Heartbreak, but McCauley overshares with much more ribald consistency and spits out such a confusing mess of cockiness and desperation that he’s impossible not to like. Think Josh Homme, but from Tennessee.
Well, it’s Rhode Island actually. Go figure. After garnering a good amount of attention with Deer Tick, McCauley caught the supergroup bug in 2009, teaming up with Dawes’ frontman Taylor Goldsmith and Delta Spirit’s Matt Vasquez for an enjoyable album of alt-country and folk rock as Middle Brother. With Diamond Rugs, Taylor reigned in a wider range of talents, most notably Ian Saint Pé of The Black Lips and Steve Berlin of Los Lobos. The resulting self-titled LP features a gritty set of rock songs that blends elements of punk and country while retaining a strong sense of melody and offering plenty of catchy riffs.
If you’ve had no exposure to Deer Tick, the force that is John McCauley might take some getting used to. Tracks like ‘Hungover and Horny’ and ‘Gimme a Beer’ may seem highly distasteful, but that’s sort of the point. While ‘Horny’ isn’t supposed to be taken very seriously, ‘Gimme a Beer’ paints an interesting picture of a man wishing for better things in life but ultimately feeling hopeless and drowning his ambitions with liquor. He’s more tongue-in-cheek on ‘Horny’, waiting impatiently for a busy girlfriend to spend time with him and complaining that “If you don’t come home/ I don’t come at all.”
But wait! Amidst all this tomfoolery there’s actually a stellar album here, with standout tracks like ‘Motherland’ and ‘Big God’ offering crunchy guitars and a down-and-out rawness that’s immensely refreshing. The chorus of ‘Motherland’ offers a taste of the powerful lyricism that runs through many of the tracks here as heavy washes of organ accompany the lines “You can laugh yourself to death/ Cause that is all that you have left/ I’ll have you know the final word/ Cause you’re no saint- you know, you never were.” McCauley takes no prisoners with his songwriting and hopefully he’ll never start.
