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Deer Tick – War Elephant

Deer Tick, a nasty little purveyor of discomfort and Lyme disease, is also the moniker Rhode Island’s 21-year-old John McCauley goes by, and some weeks back I popped his debut album, War Elephant, into the stereo for the first time as I began my morning commute.

There are people that will tell you that within the first thirty seconds of a song they can tell whether or not they will like an album or artist. I like to think that I’m a bit more patient and open-minded than all that, but I was less than a mile down the road and Deer Tick’s malt-liquored lyrics were singeing the cool morning air when something happened that made up my mind right then… A bum crossed against the light in front of me and threw his empty mini liquor bottle at my half-open window as the speakers croaked “What a cryin shame, a cryin shame, what we became,” over a bittersweet violin and modestly picked 6-string rhythm. At the moment Providence may have been more than where Deer Tick calls home.

McCauley’s music is an amalgam of Hank Williams, Kurt Cobain and many in between, and as such War Elephant wears its influences on its figurative sleeves, unapologetically I should add. Like a modern-day wayward dervish, Deer Tick’s songs create a whirl of moods and emotion, touching on all ends of the rhythm and blues spectrum. Opening the album is “Ashamed,” a somber confessional in the tradition of so many highwaymen who sing of regret while revealing through the swagger and snarl of the music that they’ll never really change. Then there’s the balladry of a song like “Dirty Dishes,” with a melody that one can almost imagine high school kids slow dancing to beneath a mirrored ball in some forgotten gymnasium.

I would fit most of the songs on War Elephant solidly in the ‘good’ category, but there are a couple songs poking into the realm of ‘great’: “Diamond Rings 2007” and “Christ Jesus”. In order to preserve the inexplicable quality that I think graces all songs we find truly great, I will keep the descriptions short and vague. “Diamond Rings 2007” is like all of my favorite foods in that it contains the perfect balance of salty and sweet, and I haven’t played it less than half a dozen times a day since getting the album. And “Christ Jesus” the second to last track, it reminds me of the feeling I got when I first heard VU’s “Heroin,” not so much musically or in subject matter, but in the song’s affect to the gut.

Not cruel enough to leave us all on such a low, the album concludes with a version of “What Kind Of Fool Am I?”, the oft covered song by Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley, though I’m not convinced I wouldn’t rather have had it all end with “Christ Jesus.” Regardless, it’s nicely done and a true homage to the country and western music that so clearly influences Deer Tick.

MP3: Deer Tick – Diamond Rings 2007