Anti-westerns "eschew the cosmic vein, swinging slightly more First National Band than New Riders, opting for more of a bumpy road pacing and coordinated guitar dips to the crowd. But just like Mike Nesmith setting himself off from his own past, Anti-Westerns have done their homework, seeming to revel in imagining themselves waking up outside of Townes’ trailer with a head full of half-truths and one liners from the night before." - Raven Sings The Blues
"An anti-western film is a movie that has horses and sheriffs and even Indians, but definitely doesn’t reinforce the moral code of the cowboy. Its hero is at least a non-conformist and often a criminal, and he (it is always a he) likely drinks more than is truly good for him. The Anti-Westerns, who are, essentially, Plates of Cake on a Johnny Cash bender, do their best to represent this anti-heroic aesthetic, celebrating beer and whiskey and hangovers, taking pot shots at piety and eating chicken with their greasy fingers. The band, led by Jonathan Byerley and including Zachary Cale, Joshua Carrafa, Jason McDaniel and several different drummers, is made up of Brooklyn-ites, but they are clearly having a good time with the slides and chugs and twangy two-steps of roadhouse country. You can imagine quite a load of bottles in the trash after these recording sessions, which our heroes likely hauled off to recycling, responsible city boys that they are.
The music is quite good, its indie underpinnings showing a bit through gleeful Americana flourishes. A lot of it’s in waltz time, the country-est of time signatures, but some of it hops and bops in 4/4, kicking up clouds of jangle and bluegrass picking in the intervals between verses. The guitar playing is particularly good, any why wouldn’t it be, with three indie veterans (Byerley himself, Cale and Carrafa) taking turns gleefully cranking the twangs and slides on a busman’s holiday. The bass is also elemental but effective, putting meat on the bones of these playful songs, which are not quite parodies but not entirely straight either.
Byerley sings in a mordant murmur, tossing off urbane asides about aging, love and drinking (often in combination), but he gets off his best lines when he tangles with religion. “I am the lamb who keeps Jesus employed,” he admits ruefully in the mostly acoustic “Toothpaste and Gin,” and when a doctor tells him to cut back on the drinks and the smokes, he replies, “Hey doc it’s fine…I’m older than Jesus was, so it’s all extra time.” The song, “Extra Time,” closes out the album in woozy, inebriated, group-sung exuberance; you sense an affinity among the band members for lyrics about trying to stay prodigal as middle age closes in.
Glass Bottom Boat Ride is good fun all the way through, even as it pokes at the scabs around getting older, drinking too much, rolling with the pains and pleasures of a long-term relationship and maybe not having set the world on fire the way you’d planned to. The highlight, though, dispatches with all those nagging discontents, puts down the brown liquor and celebrates the simple joys of eating. No one eats a chicken quite like Byerley’s loved one, the song says, which is to say, without a fork or knife or napkin, and most likely cracking the bones to get the marrow out. “Chicken Eating Blues” is a sing-along song, with a rowdy call and response, and though enthusiasms run high, for once, no one is getting blitzed. “Do we have any milk?” Byerley asks, near the end. Even if you’re not much into simple pleasures, you’ll get a kick out of this." - Jennifer Kelly, Dusted Magazine
credits
released October 23, 2020
Players:
NYC Group: Jonathan Byerley, Joshua Carrafa, Ian Burns, Zachary Cale
Yuma County CO Group: Gregory Hill, Jason McDaniel, Zack Littlefield, Maureen Hearty, Jonathan Byerley, Joshua Carrafa
Tracks 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 Recorded by Gregory Hill and Jason McDaniel at Sparky the Dog Studios in Joes, Colorado
Tracks 2, 4, 6, 10 Recorded by Gary Olson at Marlborough Farms in Brooklyn, NY
Track 7 Recorded by Jonathan Byerley in Hudson, NY
supported by 10 fans who also own “Glass Bottom Boat Ride”
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