Sunday, May 14, 2023

Local Drags - Mess of Everything


Having previously reviewed the first two albums by Local Drags, I would be remiss in not showing some love to the third as well. Stardumb Records commander-in-chief Stefan calls Mess of Everything an all-time top five Stardumb release. You're talking about a label with over 100 releases that was the preeminent post Y2K pop-punk label and currently features some of the finest bands and artists in all of underground music on its roster. So that's some seriously high praise. And with Mess of Everything getting rave write-ups from two of the music reviewers I respect the most, I knew I had to check it out. 

Springfield, Illinois–based Local Drags are essentially a one-man-band. Lanny Durbin writes and sings the songs and plays most of the instruments. For this release, he enlisted the help of Neal Klein (lead guitar), Alyssa Currie (harmony vocals), and Schy Willmore (pedal steel). Luke McNeill, Durbin's Starter Jackets bandmate, produced the album at Capitol City Recording in Springfield. On 2021's Keep Me Glued, you could sense that Durbin was beginning to step outside the boundaries of basic power pop/punk and move towards becoming a more broadly-appealing, less genre-specific singer/songwriter. Mess of Everything completes this transition. Broadly, it's still a power pop album. Yet in some funny way, it lives up to its title. On these ten tracks, Durbin's melody-driven pop-rock approach owes more than a little to the influence of alt-country, '80s/'90s indie rock, and great American heartland rock. And that is no way a bad thing. Much has been made of this being a "different" sort of Local Drags record. But even with its wider stylistic range and more matured artistry, Mess of Everything still plays to what Lanny Durbin does best: writing tuneful, well-crafted songs with honest, relatable lyrics. No doubt, this is Durbin's strongest collection of songs to date. While the country-ish "Call You a Baby" and elegant "Good For Nothin" stand out for being atypical Local Drags tunes, they stand out more for their heart-on-sleeve lyrics and memorable melodies. Unquestionably, they are two of the best songs Durbin has ever written. The tracks that are typical Local Drugs songs, such as "Heard About It" and "Totally Down," remind us what an underrated figure Durbin is in the power pop world. Falling somewhere in between, the likes of "On the Slide" and brilliant closer "Better Now" demonstrate that songwriting maturity doesn't have to come at the expense of strong melodies or good, old-fashioned loud guitars. 

Even as it finds it author mostly leaving his punk rock roots behind, Mess of Everything is a perfectly logical (and superior) next step from its two predecessors. Durbin reaffirms his status as a rock-solid and deeply likable songwriter. Still a quintessentially Midwestern rock and roll band, Local Drags remain worthy of recommendation to anyone who subsists on a steady diet of The Replacements, Tom Petty, and cheap American lager.

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