CUB COUNTRY
Stay Poor/Stay Happy (Future Farmer)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

---

The ironic thing about the title of Cub Country's new album Stay Poor, Stay Happy is that it is a sore eyed break-up album, loaded with impressively rich textures. Perhaps this irreconcilable duality is what leader Jeremy Chatelain (Handsome, Jets to Brazil) was seeking to project out from behind the mask of Cub Country, or perhaps I'm reaching there; perhaps it is merely another delightful showcase for incredible songwriting and Americana inspired instrumentation and I'm pretending to be a rock critic.

Although the comparison to Leonard Cohen's brand of folk has been offered, it might be a case of too quick characterization, or of mistaken identity. Chatelain plays off similar songs of parting, but without Cohen's raw sexuality, and complicated poetics; comparing the two might be like putting Gerhard Richter's intense abstraction up against Grant Wood's American Gothic: where the one in Cohen's mold is a brooding, miscast lothario partially reluctant to tell his tale, the other feels a little proud being the literal bearer of his own purple heart. But analogizing can go too far and sap the strength from a solid record. Chatelain delights in sad country riffs, they are the gravy to his biscuits, evinced by songs like "Leaving the Bar" and "59 Grand," and just when that becomes tiresome, he stems the tide of woe with a whimsical down tempo rocker "Be Yer Own Hitman."

It is still a sad ditty, but playful, and childish. Like you'd imagine a place called Cub Country to be.

© 2004 - Erick Mertz