A fiddle cries out to us with a solemn melody ever so gently. A vocal as heavy with emotion isn’t far behind its instrumental intro to “Devil on the Side,” but for as short a start as it is, the mood that these strings create will stay with us throughout this song from Flat River Band’s Every Dog Has Its Day. Preceded by the similarly complex “John R. Brinkley,” “Devil on the Side” is a track as in love with the ancient cultural harmonies of a classic country music genre as it is the broad sonic spectrum only reachable through contemporary recording techniques and forward, but the balance it strikes between the seemingly opposing worlds is surprisingly seamless. Where “John R. Brinkley” and “Devil on the Side” are chasing after aesthetically symmetrical structures, the powerful “Beauty Amongst the Trees” is almost affectionately one-note, crushing us with its forceful wind of a harmony and forcing us to think about a vintage country simplicity that is sadly hard to find in the genre these days, for reasons unclear to anyone with an ear for good music.
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“No Hill for a Climber” probably falls more on the experimental side than it does the straightforward from a compositional perspective, but along with the title track, I think that it captures the essence of what Flat River Band want to be as a group better than any of the other songs here do. There’s nothing scattered about the ascent towards the release in “No Hill for a Climber,” but the road to the finish line is nevertheless beset with plenty of twists and turns in the melody (which can be said for the rhythm in the title track, as well).
The tension is plentiful in Every Dog Has Its Day, with Flat River Band using it as a means of leading us into a hook more often than not – see the breathtaking “Wings of a Rumor” to hear what I mean – but I’m not entirely sure whether or not this was intentional or just a lucky effect from their songwriting style. In either case, it works startlingly well in this record’s best moments, some of which transcend country’s long-stagnant artistic parameters altogether.
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Once you’ve hit the play button of Every Dog Has Its Day’s first song, the gorgeously electrified “In Another World,” it’s awfully hard to put the record down until “Devil on the Side” has disappeared into the silence. Progressively stylized but not campy or self-involved like a concept album would be, this latest release from Flat River Band is a non-demanding, anti-commercial country record that doesn’t ask a whole lot out of its audience in exchange for a wealth of harmonies we just don’t find every day in this business anymore. The group’s longstanding fan base will have to be the ultimate judge of its credibility, but from where I sit – having listened to a couple of their LPs beforehand – I think this might qualify as one of the more complete releases they’ve submitted in their career together.
Jodi Marxbury