Straw Dogs
Any Place At All (Crafty)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2002

Straw Dogs are every sensitive male acoustic Adult Contemporary performer that you've ever hated: Marc Cohn, Dog's Eye View, Darden Smith (who I actually happen not to hate), Peter Himmelman (who I actually like) and the Barenaked Ladies (their earnest "What A Good Boy"-type songs) all thrown into a giant stewpot and boiled hard until all originality and tunefulness have been leached out along with anything to say. It's such a colorless and deadly boring formula that sometime during "Out Of Breath," the sixth song on Any Place At All , I was suddenly hit with an acute and palpable sinking feeling, a full-body shudder when I realized that I had six more songs to get through. And I didn't even know about the bonus track of studio bloopers (hilarious! They find their own songs funny!).

Straw Dogs cram their lyrics Bon Jovi-full of cliches, set it to bland folk-based music received second- and third-hand from equally boring forebears and tack on vocal harmonies that are unnecessary and half-baked, as though backup guy Darren Smith found the first notes that sounded fine without duplicating lead singer David von Beck's melody and just stopped there. A few tracks, such as "These Ashes" and "Daylong Day," are so preposterously wrongheaded that they manage to be the first songs I've ever heard that come out in favor of scapegoating and emotional stagnation, respectively. The album might (no guarantee) be closer to tolerable if it consisted of just guitar and voice, but von Beck and Smith choose, for no good reason, to feign a full band. Having done so, Straw Dogs are free to be proud of making a record that sounds like the records of countless other musicians who are performers without being artists.

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