Tiny Mix Tapes

styles: neo-traditional folk, alt. or indie country
others: Johnny Cash, White Stripes, Jayhawks

If We Can't Trust The Doctors
Cass, 2004
rating: 5/5
reviewer: filmore mescalito holmes

Thanks Christ and all that is holy for this album. My step-family of eight years and my cousins over the last few have bombarded me with all manner of sappy country artists singing material so banal and plastic it was like the '90s never happened. Then I heard Johnny Cash's too country for country American IV: The Man Comes Around. I never could've imagined so much soul could come from a genre that was often so cornball beyond the Country Bear Jamboree's wettest dreams that not even all the Garth Brooks/Dr. Pepper commercials and sci-fi Shania videos could get me to emote anything besides a few anachronistic chuckles and dejected grumbles. Blanche is a follower to this new style of emotional country. Not that they're singing about anything new, really, it's mostly the old life sucks and my baby done me wrong material; but, for once, the form matches the content. All the usual hootenanny instruments, like the banjo and slide guitar, are toned down a few notches to surprisingly good effect. In their minimalism, they achieve a pleasantly depressing backdrop to a series of poetic country lyrics featuring themes of mistrust, anguish, and love gone awry. If We Can't Trust The Doctors is a triumphant return to the true soul of country music and not a moment too soon. Blanche is just in time to do for country what the White Stripes did for rock. Wait and see...

1. (Intro)
2. Who's To Say
3. Do You Trust Me?
4. Superstition
5. Bluebird
6. So Long Cruel World
7. Another Lost Summer
8. Jack On Fire
9. Garbage Picker
10. The Hopeless Waltz
11. Wayfaring Stranger
12. Someday