album Reviews

Bob Bucko Jr. and Samuel Locke Ward

Discount Sacrifice At The Altar Of Bargains

ALREADYDEADTAPES.BANDCAMP.COM

Ican’t stop thinking about this album.

When it dropped in December of last year, I’d kind of resigned myself to not writing about it, just given the way our coverage schedule usually falls out. Typically, I avoid running reviews of albums that dropped in the previous calendar year.

Really, though; that’s a rather arbitrary cut-off. And this album, this goddamned album. It simply won’t let me go. (Obligatory disclaimer that Samuel Locke Ward is a long-time cartoonist for Little Village.)

When I was young, I was cool. I was never in the band, but I was always with the band. The doormen at the Brighton Bar in Jersey knew me, because my friends’ bands played there all the time. It was our place. Then I moved to Iowa. I was in my early 20s, with an infant to care for and a partner gregarious enough to do all the peopling for us both. I was comfortable hiding behind him and losing myself.

“This was gonna be my lucky break. Nobody knew they were fucked.”

This review isn’t about me, obviously. Except it is. Because this album is about all of us. It’s a balm and a wake-up call, wrapped into one eight-song homage to the last 20+ years of bullshittery that every one of us has put up with. Do you remember the ’90s? The way we had it all figured out? The It appropriately sets the tone for the remainder of the album’s first side. From the dream drunk romp of “Rossi Wine” to the pop-chorus hook of “Around for Good,” Gorman keeps his musical palette condensed, neatly pledging allegiance on an alt-country altar.

But his voice and lyrics work best when pushed hard against the turned-up twang that fills the final five songs on the album. Gorman seems to know this, saving his strongest for last. This side should come with a sticker warning: “Many Big Star records were consumed during the making of this half of the album.” The quintet begins with “Wild Things,” complete with some Kurt Vile acoustic guitar melodies, stonily resonant and ever-ringing. “I Had Time” is a youthful lamentation on earlier days, when the currency of unscheduled time still beat the promise of crypto.

Greenpeace boats, the Bennetton ads, the Rock the Vote campaign? And then the 21st century hit.

“What do you do when you hit rock bottom, and the world continues to turn?”

Bob Bucko Jr. and Samuel Locke Ward’s Discount Sacrifice At The Altar Of Bargains kicks off with “Lucky Break,” an 8:33 epic opener that welcomes the listener into our collective open wound. (The two quotes above are from that track.) Ward’s vocals on “Lucky Break” are aching, a poignant Bowie sadness threaded through with a tightly-controlled Cobain anger. Bucko’s instrumental work is jazzily experimental, knowing and cynical, filled with wisdom and almost resignation.

“Mapping the Way,” track three, is by contrast the album’s shortest, but it makes its point with drastic clarity: “Who among you set this right? … Someone’s got to do it.”

When track four begins, “You’re livin’ in a time of constant change, yet you’re still standing still,” it becomes clear that “someone” is us. “Drift in the Void” makes incredible use of the artists’ penchant for delicious layers of sound, drawing us in, begging for nuanced listening.

The pair smash the nail on the head a few times with track six, “Glory Days,” channeling King Missile with deep pathos and grace to tell the story of a former football star and a former cheerleader meeting in their local bar long after highschool: “20 years passed by in the blink of an eye.” The sadness of the music frames the story, but the song is also steeped in empathy.

Ultimately, the elegance of this album can only be captured in its totality. The tracks are well worth listening to individually (and I’ve not even touched on my favorites), but held as a whole, this is a gorgeous, genre-bending storytelling experience and call to action that reminds us that we’re old, but we still have work to do. —Genevieve Trainor

Dean Gorman

Outer Space, Iowa

DEANGORMAN.BANDCAMP.COM

If we are truly living through the Great Resignation, I’m expecting that the coming months will hold a heavy release of “Future Endeavors” albums and straight-up “I Quit” albums. Early to the party is Outer Space, Iowa, the second album from Burlington-by-way-ofPortland musician Dean Gorman.

In the album’s description, Gorman writes that last year, mid-pandemic, he and his family moved from “a tiny bungalow in Portland, Oregon to a timber-frame house surrounded by 7 acres of

woods just outside Burlington.” The songs on Outer Space, Iowa were all written and recorded in the basement of that timber-framed house in the months since Gorman landed in Iowa, and somehow it shows.

There are ambitious arrangements throughout the 10-song set, all of which share a wrinkled edge. (Many of the bass parts sound like they were recorded while Gorman played in waterlogged rubber boots.) The album begins with “Depression,” which sees Gorman trying out an understated Fabianesque ballad behind soft keys and “shoop-shoop” harmonies.

HIS VOICE aND LyRICS WORK BEST WHEN PUSHED HaRD aGaINST THE TURNEDUP TWaNG THaT FILLS THE FINaL FIVE SONGS.

I had smoke coming out of my ears I had blood coming out of my eyes I had strange coming out of my tongue But I had time

On “One More Day”—in fact, throughout the album—Gorman’s piano playing is subtle and superb. Then the album ends on a travel tune that references Highway 61, wrapping things up with a straight up-and-down stunner. “A Buck and a Prayer” begins with a deer’s blood drying between a driving car’s headlights, leaving the driver stricken with guilt:

Say a little prayer for him Not sure where praying gets you anymore You used to sit and close your eyes Now you just hope there’s something past the door

Don’t worry, though. It wasn’t all a waste. Gorman sings that someone came back in the night to cut off its horns. I guess that’s a little relocation, too, one I think we all can understand.