Ocho is cowboy music. Not in the conventional sense — on Luego’s latest, you’ll find no honky-tonk odes to dead dogs or mistresses gone astray.
Instead, Patrick Phelan and company translate Western loneliness through a pop medium, infusing sunny harmonies and charming melodies with a tangible sense of unrest.
Music Review
Luego
Ocho
Folk/Rock
Dive Verdict: 4/5 Stars
Like the batteries that grace Ocho’s cover, the album is charged with an emotional intensity that crackles like a storm on a prairie. Beneath a veneer of cheerful hooks and slide guitar, the bulk of Phelan’s lyrics are yearning. It’s a subtle, nuanced angst that works in the band’s favor, an anti-Morrissey pop that ambles with John Wayne stoicism.
This is especially clear on the second half of the album. Wholesome Beach Boys harmonies often give way to scathing lyrics — there’s a constant threat of thunder amid what might seem innocent and calm. Phelan’s lyrics are pointed and biting, an unexpected — if intriguing — counterpart to driving pop hooks.
On “Ain’t it Sad,” the final song on the record, Phelan sings, “Ain’t it sad, ain’t it sad / finally wrote you a song / it’s too late you’re not coming / you’re long gone, so come on.” It’s a brand of road-weary heartache that’s been visited numerous times before, but Luego proves that the theme still resonates.
Despite Ocho’s moments of reflection, the band doesn’t abandon the grooves that characterized 2009’s Taped-together Stories, and tracks like “Getting Married” and “Run Away” merge memorable choruses with tongue-in-cheek lyrics. On “Run Away,” Phelan treats a break-up with a dose of nonchalance, singing, “When you break, just make it clean.”
And while the bulk of the record is near-seamless, “Two No Ones” pales in comparison to its more solid counterparts. The track is lost among other more memorable and potent songs, and alongside tracks like “Dear Penpal,” it fails to leave a lasting impression. Lyrically, it’s also less spectacular — sure, the numerical pun is witty, but Phelan flexes his wit more mightily elsewhere on the album.
Luego’s latest is an exercise in wide, open spaces and the intimacy that such confines can allow. Like the Western landscape the band references in “Space, Babe,” Ocho is a glimpse at an individual on a vast plain, and Luego proves that a cowboy’s sense of solitude still applies in a modern age.
Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.
