These United States: Great Live Show, Decent Recorded Music

These United States

Take five scruffy Southerners, add a singer with a Tom Petty feel and some Southern Rock-Americana and you have These United States.  

I went to see this band at a local New York live music spot on a weekend.  The music was guitar heavy and lively.  These guys gave their all in a great performance. 

The room was filled with electricity, and while the previous band may have had more fans, this band’s fans were genuinely listening and enjoying the show.  It would have been hard not to enjoy this show.  The guys were genuine friends, the stage presence was ego-less, with all the guys gelling together seamlessly.

Jesse Elliot, the lead singer, sings well but is no Tim McGraw.  However, the genuine nature with which he sings covers a lot of ground.  The fact that his drummer has his back 100% makes a 
big difference.  Robby Cosenza is a great drummer, playing balls out all the time.

  
His foundation allows for Colin Kellogg, the bass player, to provide a solid bass-line off which the stars of the show, the vocals and the guitar heavy music, launch. 

This music is not syth-rock, or indie rock.  In their live show it’s just rock-and-roll but in their recorded CD Everything Touches Everything, Southern rock is clearly the star of the show.  “Will It Ever”, a song in the vein of bemoaning the loss of connection after love is lost, is typical of the songs found on ETE.  

However, that isn’t a bad thing.  But if you are expecting the balls out rocking sound found in the live show you’ll be disappointed.  

Everything Touches Everything is a road trip CD, an album I suspect grows on those who listen to it often like a blessed melanoma.  It is a CD for cleaning up the house or for looking out the window on a long bus ride.  It is a CD that goes perfectly with a scene in a movie where a girl is cleaning up the house as her boyfriend watches her dance with a mop unknowingly.  It’s a good CD. 

If you like Tom Petty, you’ll like this.  But if you are looking to rock, buy a ticket to a These United States Show.  But ETE is not the CD that will let you rock.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Even rockers, like myself, need a break every now and again.