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Blanche - If We Can't Trust The Doctors |
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06 August 2005 |
Blanche
If We Can't Trust The Doctors...- (V2)
At last, a wider audience will know of Blanche as much more than the band that was headlining the night Jack White beat up that Von Bondie guy!
Quite a bit more, hopefully, because Blanche's If We Can't Trust The Doctors... is a great piece of ethereal country with a bit o' goth and a whole lot of appeal. Of course, you'd have to point to Dan John Miller's songwriting for being a significant part of this, but the band's biggest achievement is the arrangements at work here. The songs featuring the shared vocal of Miller and wife Tracee Mae Miller on songs like the lovely and haunting "Do You Trust Me?" and "Bluebird" are the most obvious examples here, and make for some of the finest that this CD has to offer. Along with that is some of the finest use of pedal steel around, thanks to a band member that just goes by Feeny (who also happens to be one of those Garth Hudson-type can-play-anything people).
Blanche's closest cousins would probably be The Handsome Family, with the major difference being that Blanche employs a fuller sound (being more than two people after all). There are great musical ideas all over If We Can't Trust The Doctors.. - the noisy guitar solo on "So Long Cruel World", the sinister charge of "Garbage Picker", the twangy guitar on "Another Lost Summer" - and the treatment they give The Gun Club's "Jack On Fire". Blanche has a sound all their own, but don't do it by rewriting the same song over and over.
Blanche are a welcome addition to the wealth of bands exploring just what can be done from country music's foundation. Look for this one on those year end best-of-the-year lists.
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