BRENT BEST
''YOUR DOG, CHAMP''
2015
51:45
1 Daddy Was a Liar 04:09
2 Good Man Now 04:20
3 You Shouldn't Worry 04:12
4 Aunt Ramona 05:34
5 Queen Bee 04:28
6 Travel, Again 02:46
7 Robert Cole 06:40
8 Career Day 04:19
9 Tangled 05:22
10 Clotine 05:19
11 It Is You 04:31
REVIEW
By Guy De Federicis, blogcritics.org
Brent Best, lead player of on-again, off-again alt-country rock band Slobberbone, has released his first solo album, Your Dog, Champ. The rowdy, raucous, Texas roots humor of his band is greatly subdued on this effort, resulting in a low-key, sweet country sound that celebrates the cycle of life and death from a child’s perspective, with just a touch of adult cynicism.
The 11 tracks can be heard as a suite of songs that collectively conjure a paradox of Americana culture with songs bursting in rural Texas charm, even as a sack of newborn kittens are being drowned in the pond. Back porch camaraderie, cigarettes and beer, and dusty dirt and steaming blacktop roads are intertwined with references to absent and violent fathers, single-parent mothers, and lives unfulfilled.
The childhood perception of death is delicately examined in “Aunt Ramona”, a song of an Oklahoma-to-Texas family road trip in which the title subject possesses “the smell of perfume and sweet ammonia” as she quietly passes away in the back seat. “None of us could wake her, daddy said that was fine”, the child recalls as Best’s organ flirts with a sad lullaby, and gentle acoustics seem resigned to the realization that death is as peaceful and ordinary as an afternoon nap.
“Robert Cole” also reveals a child’s interpretation of tragedy, and the shaping of identity, as domestic abuse – slamming doors, enraged voices, and a cowering woman – is remembered wistfully and painfully and set against a lofty and mournful ballad in which the narrator dares to take solace on the blacktop road “where I was not to walk ’till I was old.”
Songs like “Daddy Was a Liar”, where daddy at the pond has “a bag of kittens and a brick”, and “Good Man Now”, where it is told, “The only good man is a dead man/Daddy is a good man now”, put a positive spin on the nastiest of scenarios while stressing the cardiac ache in “heart-achy”. This is gritty stuff and Best breezes through it with a naturalistic poetic flare. It is, at times, downright touching.
The country musicians backing up Best, particularly on fiddle (Ralph White), violin (Petra Kelly), and pedal steel guitar (Burton Lee), are a tidy group of players who masterfully accentuate Best’s narration like polished journeymen and can pick up the tempo when need be. “Tangled”, with its American Indian vibe, tethers on a jangle of steel guitar, and the sumptuous instrumental “Travel, Again” whips up dust and tumbleweeds like a tornado rolling across the Texas prairie.
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
by Matt Collar
A singer/songwriter with a bent toward earthy country and rock, Brent Best is best known as lead singer of the alt-country act Slobberbone. Emerging from the vibrant roots music scene in Denton, Texas in the mid-'90s, Best released several well-received albums with Slobberbone, including their highly acclaimed 2000 release Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today. After Slobberbone called it quits in 2005, Best and bandmates guitarist Jess Barr and drummer Tony Harper formed the Drams, releasing the 2006 album Jubilee Dive. In 2009 Best reunited with Slobberbone for several live shows. Since then, Slobberbone have continued to tour regularly. When not performing with Slobberbone, Best splits his time between producing for other bands, bartending in Denton, and working as a solo performer. In 2015 he released his long-gestating debut album of solo material, Your Dog, Champ, on Last Chance Records.
WEBSITE
TO THE TOP
''YOUR DOG, CHAMP''
2015
51:45
1 Daddy Was a Liar 04:09
2 Good Man Now 04:20
3 You Shouldn't Worry 04:12
4 Aunt Ramona 05:34
5 Queen Bee 04:28
6 Travel, Again 02:46
7 Robert Cole 06:40
8 Career Day 04:19
9 Tangled 05:22
10 Clotine 05:19
11 It Is You 04:31
REVIEW
By Guy De Federicis, blogcritics.org
Brent Best, lead player of on-again, off-again alt-country rock band Slobberbone, has released his first solo album, Your Dog, Champ. The rowdy, raucous, Texas roots humor of his band is greatly subdued on this effort, resulting in a low-key, sweet country sound that celebrates the cycle of life and death from a child’s perspective, with just a touch of adult cynicism.
The 11 tracks can be heard as a suite of songs that collectively conjure a paradox of Americana culture with songs bursting in rural Texas charm, even as a sack of newborn kittens are being drowned in the pond. Back porch camaraderie, cigarettes and beer, and dusty dirt and steaming blacktop roads are intertwined with references to absent and violent fathers, single-parent mothers, and lives unfulfilled.
The childhood perception of death is delicately examined in “Aunt Ramona”, a song of an Oklahoma-to-Texas family road trip in which the title subject possesses “the smell of perfume and sweet ammonia” as she quietly passes away in the back seat. “None of us could wake her, daddy said that was fine”, the child recalls as Best’s organ flirts with a sad lullaby, and gentle acoustics seem resigned to the realization that death is as peaceful and ordinary as an afternoon nap.
“Robert Cole” also reveals a child’s interpretation of tragedy, and the shaping of identity, as domestic abuse – slamming doors, enraged voices, and a cowering woman – is remembered wistfully and painfully and set against a lofty and mournful ballad in which the narrator dares to take solace on the blacktop road “where I was not to walk ’till I was old.”
Songs like “Daddy Was a Liar”, where daddy at the pond has “a bag of kittens and a brick”, and “Good Man Now”, where it is told, “The only good man is a dead man/Daddy is a good man now”, put a positive spin on the nastiest of scenarios while stressing the cardiac ache in “heart-achy”. This is gritty stuff and Best breezes through it with a naturalistic poetic flare. It is, at times, downright touching.
The country musicians backing up Best, particularly on fiddle (Ralph White), violin (Petra Kelly), and pedal steel guitar (Burton Lee), are a tidy group of players who masterfully accentuate Best’s narration like polished journeymen and can pick up the tempo when need be. “Tangled”, with its American Indian vibe, tethers on a jangle of steel guitar, and the sumptuous instrumental “Travel, Again” whips up dust and tumbleweeds like a tornado rolling across the Texas prairie.
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
by Matt Collar
A singer/songwriter with a bent toward earthy country and rock, Brent Best is best known as lead singer of the alt-country act Slobberbone. Emerging from the vibrant roots music scene in Denton, Texas in the mid-'90s, Best released several well-received albums with Slobberbone, including their highly acclaimed 2000 release Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today. After Slobberbone called it quits in 2005, Best and bandmates guitarist Jess Barr and drummer Tony Harper formed the Drams, releasing the 2006 album Jubilee Dive. In 2009 Best reunited with Slobberbone for several live shows. Since then, Slobberbone have continued to tour regularly. When not performing with Slobberbone, Best splits his time between producing for other bands, bartending in Denton, and working as a solo performer. In 2015 he released his long-gestating debut album of solo material, Your Dog, Champ, on Last Chance Records.
WEBSITE
TO THE TOP
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