It's difficult, if not impossible, to listen to Detroit's
Deadstring Brothers and not flash back to
Sticky Fingers/
Exile on Main St.-era
Rolling Stones. Lead singer/songwriter Kurt Marschke and harmony vocalist Masha Marjieh (who also plays a mean maracas and tambourine) have perfected their version of
Jagger/
Richards '70s sound. Which isn't to infer they are a second-rate
Stones cover band. Rather
the Deadstring Brothers find heat in the country that so invigorated
the Stones during that period. It's a raucous combination of
Gram Parsons and
the Band (right down to a nifty version of
Robbie Robertson's "Get Up Jake," a cool find and the disc's only cover) that provides the groove. The sound of
Highway 61 Dylan also informs tracks such as "Talkin' Born Blues," whose pounding piano, slide guitar, and organ, along with Marschke's spitfire vocals, make the
Bob connection inevitable. The unrelated
Brothers bring their own energy to this sound, though, and the nine original songs that dominate the disc have a loose yet structured feel that transform good songs into great ones. The ballad "Blindfolded" has the same tensile, bubbling-under energy, especially when the pedal steel guitar glides in, that propelled "Wild Horses."
Ross Westerbur's sympathetic keyboards emphasize both the honky tonk and rock, and help find the balance that makes this "country-rock" in the best sense of the often diluted genre. Each track is well performed, but
Starving Winter Report works best as a cohesive album with every song building upon the last to yield a disc that is more than the sum of its impressive parts. ~ Hal Horowitz