HAT CHECK GIRL
Road to Red Point
Waterbug 110
* * * *
If your idea of female/male country collaboration courses
toward the overwrought lyrics and contrived drama of Lady Antebellum, steer
clear of Hat Check Girl; Road to Red
Point is something moodier, rootsier, and more ominous. When Annie Gallup
and Peter Gallway label their songs, they drag out adjectives such as “spooky”
and “haunting,” and they’re not kidding. This album has quite a few songs about
drifters, desperados, losers, and hard-luck folks who, as they do in “The Other
Road,” tend to relive regret rather than moving on. The title track also evokes
memory, but check out its crunchy bass-driven lines that evoke swamp rock and
make you think that maybe an alligator or two will appear to no good end. This
dark little gem of an album serves gall along with the whiskey. In “Under Those
Trees” Gallway sings: “I never took to the Bible but the words ring true/It’s a
hell of a story when you’re lonely or blue/Life is a hard road to travel but we
struggle and try/And will sleep in comfort when we die.” How about a love song
in which the lady of desire stepping from the shower is compared to Scarlett
O’Hara? As you may recall, she was
a romantic figure, but also a tragic one. “Remember” is also a love song, but
the kind an outlaw might write. You want a nice ending? You’ll find it “Up in
the Country” where “it’s colder than Satan,” and he isn’t the worst thing
encountered on the road to redemption.
Gallup and Gallway gives us scorched earth country–literally
in the case of “Texas is Burning,” a piece that’s a cross between chronicle,
music, and Beat poetry. The entire album evokes the sort of thing Dave Carter
and Tracy Grammer might have done after a weekend of reading Nietzsche. So why
would anyone want to hear this? Because it’s a sonic wonderment enveloping
lyrics of poetic honesty rather than canned emotion. Give this one a little
time. At first, it’s quiet and creepy, but the more you listen, the more it
gets under your skin and you begin to see tiny rays that pierce the darkness
with hope. My hat’s off to Hat Check Girl for a bold, unconventional album.
Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a potent brew nonetheless.--Rob Weir
Here's the only decent YouTube video of Hat Check Girl. This song is on the new album.
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