As someone who hasn’t traveled as much of the world as I would like, who explores a lot of the world through its music and everything it evokes, Nick Gusman and the Coyotes sound like nothing less than America’s beating heart. And it is an America that probably never existed outside its road movies, TV adverts, beat legacy, literature, and other rose-tinted nostalgia. Still, in my mind, it is what America should sound like. Away from the spotlight of what we laughingly call the music industry; disposable pop with its bland shopping mall beat and faceless landfill indie – all complicated hair and scenester regulations, Nick and the gang offers us something real, something authentic, something that you won’t look at in ten years and just muse “what was I thinking!”
Blending punky street soul, rootsy jukebox R’n‘B, blissed-out blues, country rock, and a host of other home-cooked American sonic flavors, they mix classic sounds with a contemporary vibe that makes for the perfect album. If Americana music is the quintessential sound of songwriting that can only have been birthed in that great country, then this is undoubtedly it. From the countryfied “Sound of a Broken Heart” to the thunderous roots-stomp of “Shortcut the Mountain” and from the bluesy meander of “Stray Dog” to the Elvis-infused barrelhouse country rock ‘n’ swing of “Trucker” they cover a lot of sonic ground but make each and every inch of it their own.
It is the sound of truck stops blending into back street Chicago blues clubs, which in turn become the sound of a rocking chair creaking on a back porch as the screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways, and there is a distinct possibility that Roy Orbison is playing on the radio. It is the sound of an alternative, underground path that music took when it should have become the norm, the popular, the mainstream. It is the sound of a midnight ritual designed to re-animate the zombie corpse of the muse of music that mattered, still matters, and will continue to matter long after the current wannabe pop star, style over substance, fame chasers have returned to a day job where the main concern is asking the customer if they want fries with that!
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