PHOTO COURTESY OF COMMUNICATING VESSELS
WORDS Brian Carroll
Lo and behold, the best new album this month comes from our own backyard: Big Black Dog is the sophomore long player from Birmingham four-piece Dead Fingers, and holy crap, it is fantastic. If music is the blood of Alabama, these guys (and one gal) might just be the antioxidants, pulling heaping globs of carcinogenic black goop out and replacing it with blessed lifehope. Gifted with a supreme knack for clever lyrics, catchiness, and reassuring familiarity, the band seems to have to comes to grips with what constitutes an “instant classic” to the point of weaponization. What's more, it all sounds like it comes naturally.
The stars of the band, front and center, are dual singer / songwriters Kate and Taylor Hollingsworth, married couple. As with a Beatles record, one of the spoken, almost competitive joys Big Black Dog provides is sorting out the complimentary and contrasting styles of the songwriters, audiences immediately picking up which of the two contributed the song at hand by the personality of the arrangements as they burst forth. Unlike the Beatles, however, the equality on Big Black Dog's tracklist feels peaceable and communistic without ever sacrificing quality through utter teamwork.
Though a bit of buzz-bait (ala the White Stripes) feels evident in the discussion of the pair's union as a novel concept, it's nonetheless necessary to mention the band's synarchy as being comprised of one male and one female who happen to live together because the two distinct musical personalities of the pair transcend superficiality and blossom into a dizzying, blazing electricity when co-oped and overlapped, with personal secrets about Love (it's hard work, sacrificial, full of joy, peppered with suffering, very real, essential for humanity, and nothing to scoff at) spilling forth in the lyrics like ancient wisdom.
Taylor, providing more songs overall, sings like the missing link between J. Mascis and Willy Nelson, and plays a crackling, vibrant lead on his hollow-bodied electric guitar as if his life depended on it, his (very much alive) fingers gazelles in constant motion. Surprisingly accomplished without the use of a pick and right at home utilizing a glass slide, I first experienced Taylor's rapid-fire guitar work as the standout in Conor Oberst's Mystic Valley Band at a Delaware baseball stadium five years ago, and it remains in my mind the highlight of that show. Intricate, precise, and speedy, Taylor's craftsmanship on the guitar begs to be seen live, and even when he steps back to let his partner shine, he still quietly leads with an assured understanding of the band's direction at all times.
Balancing Taylor's more straightforward, punky songwriting style and mischievous lyrical nature is his yang, Kate, a muse who, like June Carter Cash, not only keeps the men in attendance at their concerts from getting too boorish or disheveled, but also elaborates on the band's themes, experimenting with the Honkeytonk formula in unexpected, elegant ways both playful and serious. Her vocals and lyrics are sincere and nuanced, and combine to angelic heights when the element of harmony is introduced, whether placed alongside her husband's voice or overdubbed as backup on her own tracks. Despite Kate's magnetically polarized position as the band's fire douser, the straight woman, she's self-aware enough to occasionally concede and to occasionally lead, and when she does both at once she steals the show, live and on the record.
And what a record it is: Like a Southern man's Is This It, the classic debut of The Strokes, Big Black Dog emits a tuneful, yet constrained sound, one handed down from a line of dearly beloved bands, less a byproduct of calculated nostalgia than a reverential bewilderment that popular tastes ever veered away from the sort of music they idolize. Essentially a hybrid of Lo-fi Indie Rock and vintage Outlaw Country, the band's songwriting grinder yields a genial, sprightly, and acerbic approximation of Johnny and June Carter Cash in form, but it's what goes into the machine that makes Dead Fingers unique compared to anything else in those two music landscapes. A complex wine, ready to age, it's not uncommon to guess at shades of influence as diverse as Cyndi Lauper, Wilco, Paul Simon, Mazzy Star, the Pogues, Charlie Daniels, George Harrison, and T. Rex on the palate while listening.
The setup of the album is frankly ingenious, and it all kicks off with the introductory title track, “Big Black Dog,” a song, appropriately, about beginnings. Right away, the duo takes turns displaying their individual talents through color fields of vocals, representing elements. Kate lays a foundation of purple, blue, and green harmonies, chilling and poppy, that stands in contrast to her husband's lead: oranges, reds, and yellow lightning touching down in hops, like a skipping stone, impossible to pin down, creaking and bending with movement and energy like a young Bob Dylan (were he to have actually sounded young when so). Like a train, segmented and symbolic, the song inverses the concept of fleeting in ways not often realized in music. It's the sound of birth, nurturing, and protection in an incubatory bubble, nested right in the middle of the ashen madness of the world and drunk on the anticipatory gift of life while faces and scenery zoom past unaware, full of corruption.
It's a magic formula, one that the band explores to fruition throughout the rest of the album, leaving no thematic stone unturned while maintaining a constant eye on the prize: to provide you, the listener, with a killer (and a very memorable) experience. You'll be having four or five of the distinct songs on display here in constant rotation on your mental jukebox as the emotions contained within Big Black Dog reverberate in your daily life, especially in silence and inner quietude where they belong.
Dead Fingers, and increasingly, their albums, are wisely built around the relationship of the two songwriters in more than one way. Taylor's distinct brand of not-always-self-deprecating charm reveals itself through wisecracking that takes aim at the insincere, over-serious, and trendy, and when confronted by Kate on record, in (never mean or maudlin) he-said-she-said arguments lite, it all adds up to the sort of confessional, yet confident band that rewards the listener with hope, whether through gleaned bravery, or comfort that someone else out there already works and is making it work.
While listening, you find yourself asking questions in your head you'd never dare ask to the shy faces of its members: “Where did they come from? How did they meet? What does their record collection look like?” It's not difficult to imagine they'll end up at the top, and their story, whatever it may turn out to be, would make a biopic you'd like to watch.
These factors bode well for the band, Alabama music in general, and you as the listener. Dead Fingers are humble, attractive, massively talented, wield twin beasts of hollow-bodied electric guitars, and really wow live, so it's hard not to want to nominate them for the best possible ambassadors of Alabama music as they travel the country on their tour, underway now. Montgomery music expatriot Bronson Tew (Wax Bars, Lone Gunmen) helped engineer this album, recorded in Mississippi.
Though highly rated by their fans – I get a kick at how overjoyed they are to stand close to the stage, clapping and singing along with gleeful abandon - to say Dead Fingers is under-known, even in these parts, is a heinous understatement. If you're reading this and you know what's up, you should seek out Big Black Dog, purchase it blind, and then maybe tell ten of your friends to do the same until we get these guys to the right level of appreciation.
A sly record of gentle contrasts, musically and lyrically, Big Black Dog sounds just right stone-cold sober, after a few drinks, sitting around, driving around, bouncing off the walls or in a slump, AM or PM. No matter the subject matter at hand, whether it be drug addiction or heartbreak, the band always handles it in a tasteful, hopeful, and almost giddy manner. Over time you slowly pick up the band's story in the deftly dictated cadence of the lyrics, the album's not-always-rosy mysteries unfurling with plenty of breathing room on repeat listens.
Proud to be traditional, Dead Fingers sit nicely among Alabama indie rock standouts like Drive By Truckers, Alabama Shakes, The Banditos, and St. Paul & the Broken Bones, but deliver a fragile, genuine, elemental folk spirit that lets them be romantic underdogs and carve out their own turf. If you've not heard of any of those local bands, there's no harm in working your way through the list, starting here and now.
Alan Rosser on drums and Matt Patton on bass might get tired of their bandmates hogging the spotlight, so a shout out to the equally hard working, ever-chugging rhythm section is in order for keeping this highly entertaining train rolling 'round the bend. As I sit writing this I'm wearing their t-shirt because the album is so good, it makes you want to advertise. You will instantly enjoy and eventually treasure Big Black Dog, so buy it. Ala-Bam!