Friday, August 18, 2006

CD Review: Eastwood’s Die Tryin’

By Chad Jones

Updated 12:01 p.m., August 19, 2006

I try to keep both my mind and web space open to music of all kinds. And I realize that aspiring musicians are exactly that: 'aspirers' who haven't yet reached 'that place' in their vocal or musical ability but who nevertheless strive to sing and play their best.

But sometimes (unless you're a victim of politics) honesty must outweigh courtesy. Such a time occurs when reviewing Eastwood's Die Tryin'.

Composed of five thirty-somethings from Big D, Eastwood is an alt-country group that combines garage-band sound with middle-school lyrics. And though this combination often makes for some mildly-entertaining toilet humor, these guys even fall short of comedy.

Throughout the ten-track album, singer/guitarist David Heidle must be reading his lyrics from a wet napkin. The reason the napkin must be wet is two-fold: on the one hand, it partially explains Heidle's atonal, doldrum humming (a.k.a. 'singing') which continually sounds as if he himself doesn't know or can't read the words; and on the other hand, lyrics as cliché as "I want to be with you / can you put your hand in mine?" were almost certainly hurriedly scribbled across something like a wet napkin (possibly a coaster) after a night of one too many Buds.

A high school English teacher once taught me how to tell a good poem (or song) from a stinker. The bad ones, she said, are those that allow the rhyme scheme to dictate the plot. Therefore, when a song is so predictable that you can see the next line coming from a mile away, the quality of the work suffers. In order to highlight a few examples of this cardinal sin in Eastwood's album, spaces are substituted for lyrics in the following quiz:

Example #1

If you were trying to write a song in five minutes, which of the following would "best" complete the rhyme?

"Still you sing the same ol' song, and you ____ like _____ is _____."

A) pretend; everything; cool

B) look; God; angry

C) act; nothing; wrong

[Hint: answer can be found forty-five seconds into track #1 entitled "Like Nothing Happened."]

Example #2

If you were trying to write a song in five minutes, which of the following would "best" complete the rhyme?

"I don't know why I'm still here stuck in this town, yeah, my friends have all left, yeah, _____ ___ no one _____."

A) there; is; around

B) I; am; hungry

C) something more original

[Hint: it isn't C.]

In truth, being unable to sing doesn't always keep musicians from 'making it big' (think about Cher or Blink-182), but when the vocals are unreliable, originality, emotion, and musical quality must step up and carry the dead-weight.*

Original lyrics can create memorable stories, but in Eastwood's album the songs fall flat. What the tracks offer instead is the same shallow idea that a girl was bad to a guy and now she's gone.

In regard to emotional content, Heidle is not believable. In the conclusion of track #5, titled "Rumors," the words "my heart is breaking as I pack up my things, and here comes the tears as I pull of my ring," are uttered entirely without emotion. I'm not asking that he scream and sob into the microphone (as I'm also no fan of unnecessarily-emotional pseudo-punk emo music), but a little sincerity goes a long way.

And now we come to musical quality. While I admit I've been focusing mainly on lyrics instead of straight-up reviewing Eastwood's sound, it's because there is too little to say. Imagine what you think an alt-country band sounds like, and this is what Eastwood sounds like. The only exception occurs, albeit a brief one, in track #4, titled "Fallin' Down Again." This track is the freshest and most enjoyable out of the ten. However, it also ultimately falls prey to the previously mentioned pitfalls.

While I'm not a big fan of country, and some may cite this as reason for my negative review, it really shouldn't matter; you don't have to be an expert in a genre to realize these inadequacies. On the whole, Eastwood isn't terrible. If they were playing at the Trail Dust, I probably wouldn't leave. But their sound is un-aspiring and uninspired, and therefore isn't worth the time. As they themselves sing in this very album, "If your heart's not into it, then just let it be."

*of course, there's also the category of 'marketing' which allows talentless, visionless bands to reach stardom with ease

This story was submitted by a member of the TexasGigs community

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