Middle Brother – Self-Titled (2011)

We recently took our first family holiday in about 15 years, in wine country, California. A family reunion like this was always going to make good on a number of promises, primary among them the inevitable debate, good wine and food, and without doubt the music. When I was packing to leave Mexico, feeling a bit blue about saying goodbye to a place I love, my iPod shuffled its way onto Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” – a song that indelibly and inextricably reminds me of good times with my middle brother and his wife. I happily “lai-de-dai” and symbol crashed my way through the rest of my packing smiling and looking forward to drinking, singing and boogie-ing my way through a week with my very special family.

I am one of those lucky (and sometimes slightly frustrated) girls who has older brothers, two of them, and two very special sisters-in-law. My middle brother, in particular, can take a lot of the credit (or blame) for my taste in music. He gave me my first CD when I was 12 (Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie, when everyone else was listening to the Backstreet Boys), and around the same time introduced me to Metallica’s Black Album, an album that I proceeded to grow up on. I suffered through the vast majority of Slayer’s back catalogue as a 13 year old, and consequently grew to like and appreciate proper punk in my later teen years. Nearly 20 years later, my brother and I still share a love of music, make recommendations for each other, and debate (often heatedly) the merits or otherwise of various albums and artists.

And the other day, as we meandered together through beautiful agricultural land of Northern California, we listened to one of his playlists, kicking off with Traveling Willburys, and followed by plenty of Johnny Cash, Bright Eyes, the Black Keys and the like, and as we passed through country that looks like this... 

… a new band also meandered their way onto the playlist. Ever reliable, my brother had just introduced me to Middle Bother, and it was love at first listen. I’ve subsequently listened to this album a number of times and it is beautiful in its lack of self-consciousness. It’s a deliberately slightly haphazard album, and it really works. The title track is full of wild hand-clapping, loose saloon piano, and  country riff goodness.  I think my pick of the tracks is Track 6, “Portland”, a very catchy tune that drew me in from the first strum of the opening riff.  And while the album is a low-key album, there’s an energy and intensity that comes through in tracks like “Me, Me, Me” which with more of that fantastic piano is just pure rock n roll.

This is a collaboration of super-group quality, and the sheer talent of the musicians lends this lack of self-consciousness to the feel of the album. It’s a rocking and rolling good time, without being over done. It has this sort of honest looseness to it; it is beautifully put together without feeling too polished.

A rambling, ramshackle music, for a rambling, ramshackle countryside, this lackadaisical little jaunt of an album is actually just perfect. This is my kind of country, and this is my kind of music.