River City High
River City High Won't Turn Down (Big Wheel Recreation/Doghouse)
River City High
River City High Won't Turn Down (Big Wheel Recreation/Doghouse)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2003
There’s an awful lot of music out there that falls into a nebulous middle
ground of acceptable competence, where the tweaking of just one or two facets
of production, performance or songwriting can mean the difference between
a record to which you’d never give a second thought and one that you can’t
wait to hear again. Nothing’s really wrong with River City High Won’t
Turn Down, but there’s only so long a guy can wait for it to become even
slightly more than the sum of its parts. The Virginia band toys with punk
but doesn’t hew to it like purists, which is fair enough, but their stabs
at melody aren’t helped by a singer who comes across like a less gritty Dicky
Barrett, and their attempt at mixing things up with “Hello November A.M.,”
the almost-closing country version of the closing punky-poppy “Hello November
F.M.,” seems like more of a stunt (and thus a time-waster) than an actual
product of inspiration.