Album Review: The Temperance Movement - A Deeper Cut

One of the genres I've never gotten much into is southern rock. Both sonically and culturally, there is something about the music I have never been able to connect with. Every so often a band comes along that makes me think I can change that, but it never seems to last. The last time that happened was with Blackberry Smoke's album "The Whippoorwill". I had encountered them briefly, and so gave that album a chance. It was largely enjoyable, and I certainly liked their sound, but they quickly fizzled for me, with their subsequent work making no impact at all.

I say that because this new album from The Temperance Movement sounds quite a bit like Blackberry Smoke. They have tapped into the blues roots of American southern rock, which is funny, as the band is British. You could try to say they are bluesy in the way The Rolling Stones were, but I hear so much of the American south in their sound that I don't think it would be an accurate claim. And since this is an album made in the aftermath of a lapse of sobriety, the southern connections ring even louder (what is that genre if not about drinking?).

I started my preface talking about my distance from this style, in part to make it clear what The Temperance Movement has done here. This is not music I am naturally drawn to loving, and yet I find this record to be engaging and enjoyable in a way that old-school rock sometimes struggles to be. There are two tracks these bands can take. One is to be like Graveyard, and use the weight and power of the blues to propel their rock and roll. The other is to lean into emotion and try to add plaintive melody into the mix. That's the approach The Temperance Movement has taken, and it pays off in spades.

"A Deeper Cut" is an album of bluesy vintage rock and roll, but we seldom hear it (new or old) with so many lush melodies carrying the songs. This is less an album of big bluesy riffs than it is a songwriter's album. You get the swagger of rock and roll, the gritty power that comes from that old-school Marshall sound, but you also get beautiful moments of melody that classic rock never offered up. Mick Jagger might have had charisma (I don't see it, but everyone else does), but no Stones songs I've ever heard were constructed like this, nor do I think he could have sung them.

It's odd how we associate certain sounds with places, and become amazed when the geography doesn't match our ears. The Temperance Movement doesn't sound like a British band at all, but I think that's one of the things that makes this album work. They are filtering their perspective through the sound of someone else, which gives a different take on it than from those you would expect. As outsiders, they can bring something new.

Maybe the people who grew up loving Lynyrd Skynyrd would find sacrilege to the changes made to the sound, but I find The Temperance Movement to be refreshing. "A Deeper Cut" is the kind of album that works across genres and borders. They've done a damn good job with this one.