Reigning Sound – Too Much Guitar
In the Red

Full disclosure: this is a review of a 5-year-old album from a bar-band filled with middle-aged men. There is no retarded animal reference in the band’s name. This record is called Too Much Guitar. This is not an ironic title: guitars were played in the making this record. No goofy loops. No flash-animated, fan-videos. No guest-appearances from members of the Arcade Flamer.

For those of you that belong here:

The Reigning Sound have a new record due this Summer and you didn’t buy the last one. This seems as good a time as any to let you in on Too Much Guitar.

You may not have heard much from Greg Cartwright. During the nineties, this fellow went by Greg Oblivian and was member to the Memphis garage-punk outfit, the Oblivians. These Oblivian jerks walked their psych-punk down the ailse where the Reverand Utah Smith baptized it in the River Delta. The brothers Oblivian went on to make joyful noise in greats like Soul Food, Play 9 Songs With Mr. Quintron, and Melissa’s Garage Revisited. They also broke up. Thankfully, Greg and Jack Oblivian reclaimed their abandoned Compulsive Gamblers moniker and made a few more albums that every other swaggering pretender wishes he had written.

Cartwright, thankfully, has not yet been fool enough to release a proper solo album like so many other idiots begging to suck. If the man has songs to play, he takes up a man’s band name to play them under. And so, the Gamblers gone broke, we got the Reigning Sound. The Reigning Sound’s first two albums, Break Up, Break Down and Time Bomb High School, brought a turn toward slick-production with a pop, country-western bent. This approach produced some memorable tunes, “I’m So Thankful” and “Stormy Weather” not least among them. However, touring shook the devil back into the newer, mellower Cartwright. (And much of the Sound’s early material is improved upon in live performance; see “Reptile Style” and “I’m Holding Out” on the just-released-on-cd Live at Goner Records album, for example.) Returning to home and eager to make a racket, the Reigning Sound shacked up with colleague Jay Reatard and turned out 2004’s Too Much Guitar.

Listening to this record is like making love with a sandpaper-condom and enjoying it.
 
And do treat that title like a warning: you turn this up too loud, and the treble will melt your eardrums to useless. That word “treble” might set-off some alarms in those of you with extremely bad taste; but be assured- the Reigning Sound is the best Rock n’ Roll band going. Yes, better than all of your shitty, favorite bands. And more impressively, the Reigning Sound is at times better than some of Cartwright’s favorites. Too Much Guitar is a Tennessee reminder that loud don’t mean tough. There is no “neanderthal-thud” substituting here for the bass. Too Much Guitar restores the bass guitar to that anchor-of-melody you might remember from a thing called worthwhile music. If you have an Orange amp t-shirt and regularly call things “brutal,” you would do well to avoid this album; this is not insecure, macho-boy-rawk and these 14 tracks will not grant you masculine reassurance. Too Much Guitar is just tough as hell, is all. 

When a musician can sing lyrics that might as well have been lifted from journals of 14-year-old girl-boys and still make Charles Bronson look like Ben Stiller, you know you have a singer on your hands. Like Motown before him, Greg Cartwright sings about begging on bended knees and always being true. Cartwright’s songwriting reconciles pathetic, emasculating desperation with an unyielding dignity. Too Much Guitar resurrects the lost truth that Rock n’ Roll is the only decent outlet for emotion. Of course, ever since “Rock” lost “Roll,” music has suffered a drought of honesty. From the idiots using “chugga-chugga” riffs, ill-advised cowboy hats and spousal abuse to compensate for tiny wangs, to the pathetic, indie-dorks whose collective wangs declare secesion every time they write a myspace-poem or talk about their feelings, nearly-everything with the pretense of being some kinda “rock” is shameful, garbage. At its best, real Rock n’ Roll is an outlet for fightin,’ cryin,’ stealin,’ lovin,’ hatin,’ hurtin,’ beggin’, drinkin,’ and dyin.’ And that’s what goes on in Too Much Guitar. Cartwright’s music has always been made out of Soul, honesty, and a willingness to piss the right people off. Even if you hate Too Much Guitar, you won’t find another album that cares less about what you and your pastel v-neck think.

Too Much Guitar bears a stronger relation to work from Cartwright’s previous bands than the last couple of Reigning Sound albums. The nasty crooning of the Gamblers feels-up “If You Can’t Give Me Everything,” while “We Repel Each Other” and “Medication” holler back to killers like “My Love Is A Monster” and “The Way I Feel About You.” And ol’ Greg Oblivian’s nastiness comes out in “Excederine Headache #265.” These connections to earlier albums don’t render Too Much Guitar a retread. Sure, the themes typical of his work are accounted for, but Too Much Guitar is distinct in providing the most fun to be had in a Greg Cartwright album.

Every track knows how long it should be, with hooks and riffs so tight you initially miss them. The catchiest track on the album is “I’ll Cry”: a dance floor, doo-wop tune that was a hit-single in a less-shitty, parallel universe where the Strokes stayed child actors or died. And despite the surplus of two-minute, hook-drills, Too Much Guitar does not lack depth. “Drowning,” possibly the albums strongest track, is a song about teenage death that avoids all pitfalls of base, sentimentalism. Subtly morose and appreciably restrained,”Drowning” plays like the taciturn confession of a well-lived man. “Funny Thing” lacks this restraint, offering instead an embarrassing exaggeration of the pains of rejection that every dude – save for me – can relate to. The lyrics here are not at all profound or insightful: “Funny Thing” is an honest song that cries like a girl in your beer, but graciously leaves you memory-erased and man in the morning.

As undeniably solid as this album is, its not Cartwright’s best and not every track is a winner. The standout offender is “Let Yourself Go,” a track so similar to “Helter-Skelter” that it becomes difficult to endorse. Its a fun song, but also the rare cut that feels like Cartwright was trying too hard. Maybe I’m missing the irony, but the generic, anti-establishment “maaan” lyrics do this track no favors. I can’t defend gems like “Take no care, don’t cut your hair. And watch out for those institutions. With their promises and resolutions.” Really, Greg? Please don’t let Janine Garofolo write any more songs for you. Thankfully, four-worthwhile covers help you pass this blemish. “You Got Me Hummmin’” is an especially rad cover of Geno Washington’s great take on “Hummmin’.” And “Up Tonight” does fine by Jim Dickinson’s original.

We’ll be seeing what the last half-decade has done for Carwright and co. in short order; Love and Curses is due out this Summer on In the Red Records. It will make no money.

Of course, I don’t want that to happen; it would be great if more kids took to the Reigning Sound. But this don’t seem likely. Too often have I played Oblivians, Gamblers, et al. and been met with blank stares, followed by a glib dropping of the word “garage,” and finally some idiot comment about the White Stripes. The damned fool will then often proceed to play Animal Zoo or Panda Wolf or some other faggy-jive where a guy loops mouth noises for an hour, cuz you know, its totally fine to play queer takes on early Floyd albums; just don’t make Mr. All-American-Apparrel uncomfortable with any of that soul. A hipster’s dismissal of quality, Rock n’ Roll as having been “done before” is especially golden given that he almost assuredly hasn’t listened to any of this “old” Rock n’ Roll he quotes in the first place. Yeah, clearly the guy wearing-out that Junior Boys 12-inch in his girl-pants is just tired of all his old Donald and the Delighters and Gene Clark 45s. The future is all animal band-names and mouth-noises, right fellas?

So, until Greg dresses like a Target ad and starts selling sterile, “white-boy-sandal-blues” with his sister, the Reigning Sound are unlikely to move a ton of records. But thats good, because that way they can’t afford to stop making them. This seems to be understood but good by our “creepy-genius-on-a-bar-stool”: the Reigning Sound’s merch-booth offers a single t-shirt that reads “Kids Don’t Know Shit.”

Kindly do the needful, and buy Too Much Guitar.

Listen to “Bluff City” by Compulsive Gamblers

Listen to “Mellisa’s Garage Revisited” by The Oblivians

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