Cooder Graw,
Shifting Gears

Label: Three-to-One Records
Year: 2001

(3 out of 5)

While Pat Green, Cross Canadian Ragweed, and a small handful of artists have captured most of the national attention over the last few years, it's bands like Cooder Graw that keep Texas Music thriving. A relentless touring schedule, creative songwriting, and solid instrumentation have helped make the band a popular live attraction throughout the state.

While Cooder Graw infuses its live shows with tremendous energy, the band has found it much more difficult to add that same magic to its studio albums. Shifting Gears, the band's second studio effort, features an uneven mix of hits and misses.

The songs that work best seem to share a small-town theme. One such highlight is the title cut, which reinforces the stereotype about the all-powerful local sheriff: Mind your manners and you ain't got to worry / It's a well known secret the sheriff runs a tight town / Just don't hurt nobody or you'll be goin' down. Songwriter and lead vocalist Matt Martindale employs his best low growl to add an effective, leering menace to each line.

Another strong cut about small-town life is "King of the Dairy Queen." Anyone who grew up in a small town (or even a large town) knows about the hangers-on who never seem to want to grow up and move on. Martindale captures that sad sort perfectly: Letter jacket in the closet / Trophies on the shelves / All from the first eighteen / Got nothing from the last twelve … He's the King of the Dairy Queen / The uncrowned Prince of the Town / He's living in the looking back of time / Long enough to keep him turned around.

"County Colors" is perhaps the flip-side to "King." Instead of the high school hero who can't let his past glory fade away, here we have the small-town simpleton who commits a heinous crime that may lie beyond his comprehension: Now he's goin' to Hell in a county jail / Wonderin' what he's done / Now he's got three squares a day / Visits once a week / And the county colors to keep him warm.

The results fall off significantly when the band moves away from the small-town picaresque and into the well-worn lyrical pathways of love gone wrong. "Better Days," with the heartbroken lover spouting lines like I've had better days, in airports with rain delays / Flat tires in traffic jams, and any time I've been damned, sounds like a made-for-airplay single and is a marked departure from the free-wheeling sound that characterizes most of the other tracks. "God Only Knows" mines similar territory, this time with a husband suspecting his wife of breaking their vows. The list goes on: "Any Old Girl," "Wicked Witch of the West," "This Hurt." Let's just hope Martindale has mended that broken heart so he can focus on more fruitful and original material.

Cooder Graw is clearly a cut above the average Texas Music artist. While the band has yet to create a breakthrough studio album, that may happen soon (word is they're finishing up their album, due later in 2004).

Buy: Lone Star Music, Amazon

August 5, 2004