I can’t wait for Ha Ha Tonka’s next album.
The first song off of Death of a Decade, "Usual suspects,” hits you with a post-Americana energy filled with nice guitar riffs, a great melody and strange power-pop grooves. This is dance music for bearded guys who dance alone with their bottles of PBR fully clenched in their fists. And a few songs later, “Problem Solver,” after an initial slow intro, kicks into a rollicking song about well, it’s about a girl who solves problems. Sure there are (bad) lyrics but it’s that chorus that sticks in your head (and your feet) and makes you want to have problems that the girl can fix.
But in the rest of the album, for some reason, all connections to the dance floor are lost and instead the album gets all post-folky, placing melodies and the lyrics center stage. All well and good if you have a voice like Jeff Tweedy, early Ryan Adams or John McCauley of Deer Tick. You believe them when they sing—even when they have painfully, clunky lyrics. But Brian Robert's voice of Ha Ha Tonka sounds beautiful: I don’t trust him that he knows about pain or sorrow. His voice feels too slick: after the last song is over and the bar lights go on, I imagine him heading back across the tracks to a nice room with clean sheets and picking up his well worn copy of the latest Daniel Woodrell novel.
And yet, there’s something to this band that I keep coming back to. I just hope they get less serious and have more fun. Less literary and more rock n roll. I’m growing my beard and carving a place on the dance floor just in case they do.
