Disco de Old 97's: “Blame It On Gravity [Digipak]”

"We just finished recording the new Old 97s album and it's really good, it's burning a hole in my pocket. I wish I could give you all a copy."

It was mid-February 2008, ironically a few days before Valentine's Day, and suitably I was thinking in the back of my mind about a girl I'd be taking to dinner in honor of that occasion. I was standing on the wood floor right in front of the stage of a club just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean and Rhett Miller was behind the mic, just the man and his acoustic guitar. The above (and I am paraphrasing but he said almost exactly that from what I recall) was his introduction to a performance of a few of the tracks from this album, Blame It On Gravity. I don't actually recall for certain which tracks he played - I remember hearing "No Baby I" and "Ride," possibly "Dance With Me." They were good, perhaps not as immediately engaging as the stuff on Too Far To Care, but they had enough depth that I knew a few listens would probably get me hooked. I remember leaving the club feeling satisfied with what I had heard. The girl, by the way, stopped seeing me shortly after Valentine's Day.

What's funny as I re-read the above paragraph is the way I associate this band's music with girls. It's no surprise. Many of their songs are about love, usually love gone wrong, and the lyrics often describe those situations with enough sensitivity and detail to put you smack dab in the middle of the narrator's life. Rhett's characters are often attractive sad sacks who mean well but are subject to their own flawed natures, causing them to mistake lust or need for love with dire consequences. When I first heard Too Far To Care, I came away feeling like I had just had a couple of tumultuous relationships in the span of the hour it was playing for. I happened to discover this band during a period of my life when I was going through some relationship troubles of my own (very similar to the protagonists of these songs) and the 97s' albums became a constant companion for me.

This band also grew with me as I matured. I happened to love 2004's Drag It Up, a more measured and mature statement which dealt with personal concerns beyond just the standard love-gone-wrong fare. This album had some grander themes, about how life can steer us in the wrong direction if we let it, and how love can change over time. I did miss the charging tempos and funny stories from the earlier years, but of course I still had the earlier albums and the band's live performances as old standbys.

So along came this album, which I just managed to buy the day it was released (I had completely forgotten this one was coming out until I checked the web, and then ran over to Best Buy right before they closed to pick it up). The critics seemed to be calling it a quasi-return to form, and one listen made it clear why they said so. It rocks harder than its predecessor, and resurrects more of the band's country roots than any album they have released since since Too Far To Care. It seems like the band has accepted their cult status after their bid for mainstream success with Satellite Rides, and is settling in as purveyors of the kind of country-power pop hybrid that brought them their fan base in the first place. However, this is also the work of the middle-aged rock band that made Drag It Up, in that the approach is again somewhat measured. For me, the blend works well.

There are some rockers such as "The Fool" and "Early Morning" which take you right back to the days of Too Far To Care, and there are also slower numbers like Murray Hammond's beautiful "Color Of A Lonely Heart Is Blue" (one of his best tracks ever and a real stunner of a song), yet the bulk of the album passes by at an easy, self-assured mid-tempo pace. The best tracks are collected at the beginning and end, with the slightly more generic numbers sandwiched in the middle. Although many of these are devoted to the usual themes of romance gone wrong, the band expands its reach to cover such topics as theological themes ("Here's To The Halcyon") and days gone by (the aforementioned masterpiece from Murray Hammond, as well as "The One"). The relationship songs are perhaps less immediately personal than in the band's earlier years (these are married guys after all, probably no longer given to carousing) but deal with these sorts of themes in a way that reveals insight into the human condition nonetheless. "You got to be a fool/to be a fool in love" sings Rhett Miller on the opening track, reminding us that "love is gonna come" if you "coax it out." Such a reassuring sentiment may be the opposite of some of his earlier lines ("I believe in love but it don't believe in me," for example) but the optimism is no less sincere than anything that preceded it.

So to end this review, this album is a logical progression from what came before for this band, and bodes well for their future. For me, it also came along at just the right time, and serves as a reminder that just because we grow more mature, we don't have to lose the things that made our younger years worthwhile. In fact, the added perspective just deepens the experience.