With plenty of picking-up-the-highway-rhythms, Casey Neill and the Norway Rats open their album, Goodbye to the Rank and File, with “All Summer Glory.” Paying a debt to a Jay Farrar sound, the song has a two-lane highway tempo—cooking along as it begins and then slowing down for the one red light towns in between. The Farrar sound is clearly the most indelible mark of Neill’s music, although on Neill’s “The Ramble” R.E.M. and Michael Stipe’s voice comes to mind as well when remembering their early explorations of Country-influenced ballads. Neill also delves slightly into that combination of Country and Celtic found on the Rankins (or perhaps better said on the punk Celtic country side of the Pogues), with the Celtic feel showing up especially on the anthemic ballad “When the World Was Young.” The story song “Radio Montana” has a forlorn train rhythm as if written by Gordon Lightfoot, arguably the strongest track here (although I’m biased towards any song that reminisces about how the “radio fades to static”). An accordion-drenched version of Hüsker Dü’s “She Floated Away” also moves with a Celtic lilt and makes an excellent jumping off point for Neill and the Rats.
Casey Neill
In Music We Trust Records
