We Are the Boggs We Are

Finally, the long-awaited justification for opening one's mail. Unlike some record reviewers (I heard that a couple who both worked for a major music mag actually employed Ryder to haul away a truckload each week), I listen to every CD I am sent. At least once. (I'm not sent that many.) Of course, if I listened to everything just once, many of my favorite albums would (for me) never have happened. That's where a good, pesky publicist, like Steve Manning at Sub Pop, comes in. Yet the Boggs didn't need Steve, as even though I wasn't looking for a Carter Family-meets-the-Pogues record to come into my life, they do it so well that, now it's here, I'll just have to push aside The Eagles' Greatest Hits (1971-1975) and the Go to make some room in the middle.

Don't get me wrong?there's still a lot of opportunity for improvement here. This quartet out of Williamsburg could be successfully marketed as a bluesier, Deep Southier version of the White Stripes, with a splash of Nick Cave ode-to-a-beautiful-dead-girl ("Poor Audrey James," "Emily, O, Emily") thrown in. We Are the Boggs is definitely a step back musically, but only because we've all gotten too far away from the basics in art, which is why this revival period blows like a breath of fresh air.

The Boggs' lyrics are only Pogue-ish in the vaguest of senses, but fail often at nailing a basic rhyme scheme, not to mention rarely achieving anything as beautiful as "I saw the streams, the rolling hills/Where his brown eyes were waiting/And I thought about a pair of brown eyes/That waited once for me." That's the kind of heartbreaking sentiment Shane could afford to throw out as scrap. It's something the Boggs will have to take more time with, and at least get closer to if they wanna make it out of Brooklyn.

As far as the members go, all we are told is that they met busking (i.e., playing in the subway?kind of cheesy, and it ain't exactly getting coke blown up your ass by the guitar tech, but we all have to start somewhere), and that they look, judging by the cover art, like they fit nicely in "the burg," or as my friend Carl calls it, "Bedford Avenue U." There are two girls listed on the credits as vocalists, although excepting the length of their shag haircuts and different last names, they appear identical. Perhaps twins? Or is this just a nice bit of Photoshop, and Greg Glover, the co-CEO of Arena Rock and all-around nice guy from Birmingham, is having the last laugh? One of the guitarists is also seen here reading that cover of Shout with the Strokes on it. Someone recently and sarcastically observed that the one good thing about the Strokes (at last something I might be able to agree with, I'd thought) is that, among industry types, they've set off a "Seattle in the 90s" run on the Brooklyn scene. Therefore I suggest anyone who got passed over (which was everyone) when the same happened last year in Detroit (thanks to the White Stripes) make haste, and take the L train?