Drive Another Nail Into My Coffin Lid.

Rob's been trying to get me on the William Elliott Whitmore train for a while now, so I wasn't entirely surprised that he picked Hymns for the Hopeless from his bag of tricks for me to listen to this week. I have thoughts about it...

As the story goes, Whitmore grew up surrounded with Country and Americana-roots music, found his way into the fringes of the hardcore punk scene opening shows with a mic and a banjo, was discovered and was eventually signed to his first record deal. That deal lead to the 2003 release of his debut album, Hymns for the Hopeless and spawned a career now in its second decade. Good for hymn, err, him.

As much as I like to boast a pretty broad musical palette, an appreciation for Country music is a gift I've yet to receive. Now there are certain artists that I genuinely adore. I stumbled into the immersive world of Doc Watson and traditional American folk music through Greg Graffin's 2006 Cold as the Clay record. As a kid, I grew up with the sounds of Patsy Cline coming from my mom's stereo. Willie Nelson's Stardust is a flawless record, end of discussion. The Pancho and Lefty album introduced me to Merle Haggard, which inevitably opened the doors to Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. There's a vulnerable honesty in those records that transcends genre definitions.

Everything else? I have a really hard time getting down with it.

Going into Hymns for the Hopeless with an open mind was gonna be a tough order, I knew that from the get-go. And it admittedly took several tries to get through the whole album front to back without skipping ahead. After chewing on this album now for a few weeks, my unfiltered thoughts are as follows:

It's Fine.

Whitmore's stripped down approach to the music requires either an abundance of confidence or an assuredness that the songs can stand tall on their own (maybe a little of both). Album opener "Cold and Dead" is an a cappella performance that's heavy on the melodrama, while other songs like "Does Me No Good", "Burn My Body", and "From the Cell Door to the Gallows" feature Whitmore accompanied only by his banjo. The 8 tunes on the record each pay straightforward homage to a sound that's long teetered on the precipice of being lost to time, but that's part of where I start to get hung up on things.

It's almost like he's cosplaying a sound that he's generations removed from. Granted - you could walk into any neighborhood bar on a Saturday night and hear similar troubadours spinning similar yarns, but somewhere between his over the top warble and the hipster caricature captured in his press photo, it feels a wee bit manufactured. Outside of the opening track, if you put a gun to my head and asked me what song we were listening to, I'd be in a bit of a pickle. In fairness, this was album #1 from the guy and it's entirely possible that each record matures from its predecessor, but I'm not nearly emotionally invested enough to find out.

A good man once told me "never yuck somebody else's yum". So while I'm not the target demographic for Hymns for the Hopeless and I'm sure Rob will tell me that I'm out of my mind, there is absolutely a base that finds this kind of "yum" to be delicious. Good for them.

Now here are some pictures of animals dressed up as cowboys. You're welcome.