In Stores Now: Love and Curses by the Reigning Sound

Cover illustration of GEHL Brothers' Service and Parts List, for the Self Unloading Forage Box with Attachments Model BU710, 1965

It's that time of year - there are no more big releases coming up in 2009 to look forward to, so I'm running out of things to write about under the heading "In Stores Now". Luckily, this is a good time to go back and pick up some albums that I missed somehow - I'll admit that the primary reason I've been doing this is that I want to have a good list of my favorite 2009 albums to post in December. Some of the albums I've bought will probably be prominently featured on that end-of-year list, and I'll write about them then, but Love and Curses, which came out back in August, is one I wanted to mention right away.

I've never really listened to the Reigning Sound - I hardly know anything about them. I guess they've been around for a while - I know they're from Memphis and their frontman Greg Cartwright used to be the guy from the Oblivions. I'm on the fence when it comes to garage-rock revivalists - sometimes the sound works for me and sometimes it doesn't. I was a little surprised, though, by how well Love and Curses works - the writing is first-rate and tied to a specific garage-rock sound without being weighed down by it. The two key things in the Reigning Sound's sound for me are Cartwright's vocals, which seem much more invested in the songs than some you hear (*cough*BlackLips*cough*) and give the songs some real substance and maturity, and the Hammond organ sound that's used to great effect throughout the album. The hard songs hit hard without being too bludgeoning - I find that too much Sonics-style thumping can give me a nosebleed, but songs like Love and Curses' howling opener "Brake It" and "If I Can't Come Back" have just the right amount of aggression and sneering.

Love and Curses gets a little same-y in the middle third, but it has a string of three excellent songs ("Love Won't Leave You a Song", "Polly Anne", "Is It True?") right at the end. Unfortunately, it then finishes with the album's only real misstep, "Banker and a Liar", a raunchy, old-timey mandolin and accordion song that almost crosses into Decemberists territory (which you want to stay away from as a garage-rock band). For me, the Reigning Sound is at their best with songs like "Something to Hold Onto", a midtempo number with soulful vocals and an impeccable acoustic arrangement that draws from '60s R&B as much as garage.

"Something to Hold Onto" by the Reigning Sound