NO RIVER CITY
This Is Our North Dakota (Six Little Shoes Records)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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To read the press material that came with this disc, you'd think the music of No River City would drive you to Richard Buckner/James McMurtry levels of despair, but it sure didn't hit me that way. There's certainly an air of melancholy surrounding some of the tracks, but not much more than you'd expect from your standard hard times, broken heart country music. That sums up the theme of the ten tracks offered by Drew de Man (vocal, guitar, accordion) and Terri Kay Onstad (vocal, cello, keys, guitar), the Atlanta-based duo that do business as No River City. It's not really a fair description, though, because their songs and presentation are definitely above the level that I'd consider 'standard.'

For their debut album, This Is Our North Dakota, they get some sonic support from Will Kimbrough's drummer, David Gerkhe, and Josh Rouse & the Bees, but there's no question that the songs, voices and unique instrumentation of de Man and Onstad are the primary focus here, and the elements that make this release notable in the sea of Americana releases that arrive every month. They might benefit from a surer hand in the production booth, with some of the tracks sounding more like demos than finished product, but that's partly due to a deliberate effort to keep it loose, to present their songs without "striving for mathematical perfection."

This Is Our North Dakota is a promising first effort, though, worth plenty of replay and pointing the way to a future considerably brighter than the subject matter of the songs.

Track List:

Last Thing I Remember * Fainter On My Tongue * Who Are You * 100-Mile Dance * Broken Lines * Ashes * Corrinne * Night Falls So Hard * Running To Stand Still * Visit Me

[Pick this up at store.milesofmusic.com.]

© 2003 - Shaun Dale