Deadstring Brothers: Starving Weather Report

When your head is hitting the ground; when you're picking gravel from your knees; when you've spent the night gathering up your clothes, Exile on Main Street and Brown Album LPs she threw out the window onto the lawn the night before--then you're ready for Deadstring Brothers.

Starving Winter Report, Deadstring Brothers’ debut Bloodshot release, pulses with exuberant arrangements painted with the nostalgic call of the Rhodes piano, Stax-worthy horns and lonesome-prairie pedal steel. Frontman Kurt Maschke's warm and rolling lyrics and rock chanteuse Masha Marijieh's sultry vocals are the spine of the band; sustaining vocal harmonies so sweet and inseverable a crowbar couldn't pry them loose. It's an album with an undeniable flair that cries out for some big speakers, a Detroit rag top with a case of Stroh's in the trunk, and a reason to get good and GONE.

Littered with themes of dragged-out battles both won and lost, Deadstring Brothers have come out the other side all the wiser, with a record powerful enough to pierce your heart after the first listen. Sharp, nicotine-tinged odes teeter with the right amount of nostalgic spirit and rock sentiment (check out that excellent cover of the Band's "Get Up Jake" for ample proof); hearkens to a time well before we felt compelled to add the "classic" in front of "rock." The 'String Bros show it ain't dead.

(From Bloodshot Records)