Evening River Band are a dark country rock band from Philadelphia, comprising of Denny Barron on bass & vocals, Jeffrey Fields on guitar & vocals and Lou DiDomenico on drums. You may remember that we featured their sister act Morning River Band last year, an act that made country songs soaked in booze and regret. Evening River Band take that same formula but soak it in something altogether more shadowy and intense, complete with the fire and brimstone that would be at home in a classic Southern Gothic novel.
The album opens with ‘1 Corinthians 13:13’ which immediately pounds along in a fuzzed out country rock squall. The lyrics follow in the Americana tradition, all lonesome blues and howling at moons, but there’s none of the warm nostalgic hope most country songs hold on to. ‘Ashes & Lead’ is equally heavy, with rumbling guitars and furious percussion and fiercely Gothic Biblical imagery.
“Moses fell to his knees
threw the tablets down
Yahweh parted the sea
to watch his children drown”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=856490197 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=784070251]
Those who have listened to Morning River Band will be familiar with ‘To Give Up (The Ghost)’, although the track’s country twang has been stripped and replaced with grungey rock. ‘The Noose’ sounds misleadingly upbeat with its higher tempo, while ‘Lent’ shreds and tears its way through a two and half minute run-time. ‘Punish the Soul’ has a hard rock swagger over big licks of reverberating, rib-rattling guitar, a three-minute distillation of what Evening River Band do so well.
“Punish the body
punish the mind
punish the mind
punish the soul”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=856490197 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=3706635161]
In comparison, ‘Bluebonnet Blues’ sounds like a ballad, but, staying true to the Southern Gothic tradition, ends on a grotesque and morbid note (“Ophelia, Ophelia, whom did you betray? /
Crowned queen of east Texas, found dead the next day”). ‘Exit 1/ Resurrection Blues’ has a sort of weird backwoods ritualistic vibe, drunk on moonshine and apocalyptic visions, images of the moon and the sun and a sky-full of dying stars. ‘In Ruins’ is a shadowy tale of dead brothers and liars and thieves, before the finale kicks the pace up a notch, the perfect Americana-tinged rock song to close the album.
If you like your country with more grunge than twang, the Evening River Band are the band for you. Unfortunately EP5 sees the band sign off on an indefinite hiatus, so be sure to dig in know so you know what you’ll be missing in the coming months.
You can get EP5 now as a name-your-price download via the Evening River Band Bandcamp page.