Right on Dairyland

Album Review

Good things often come from woodshedding, musicians huddling together in a secluded location, free from distractions, doing nothing much except what they came there to do. Dylan and the Band certainly benefited from their time together at the legendary Big Pink house, and Traffic found a place in the country and stayed there till they had enough music to call a debut album. Songwriting brothers Matt and Nate O'Keefe of North Carolina's Day Action Band installed a studio in a small converted building adjacent to the rural house owned by novelist Matt and his novelist wife, and the next thing you know they emerged with this gratifying collection of tuneful pop-Americana. There's a refreshingly unpretentious lo-fi ambience to this homemade production that affirms the honesty and directness of the songs. Even though it rocks, this is unhurried, non-aggressive music and the deliberate avoidance of sophistication in the mix affixes it with an undeniably timeless quality. The vocals, devoid of technological augmentation, lie starkly above the instrumentation, which too is kept low-key: the old tried and proven, simple, and trusty basic guitars/bass/drums/keyboards combo. Those keyboards, the vintage organ in particular, lend a soulful touch to the O'Keefes' words, which achieve a workable balance between the literary and the folksy, taking commonplace situations and everyday emotions and making of them something not very common at all: music that feels real.