These United States: Crimes

By: Dennis Cook

Such winding ways, such crooked footed running, such a winning, wobbly gait. These United States are as catchy as the common cold and smart as a doctorate waving academic. Beginning with Abel wiping the crumbs from his family table, Cain hovering near, we’re soon tossed into a head bobbin’ cultural maelstrom, Don Quixote and Atlantis, Samuel Clemens and the Dead Sea Scrolls, each rise up amongst many more sweeping references, whipping us like bugs on a windshield as TUS barrels ahead, speed and motion the only way to escape “the same shameful sights we sense inside ourselves.” Oh, it’s not that Crimes (released September 23 on United Interests) isn’t reflective, quite the opposite really. It’s just not meditative or melancholy. There’s just nothing pensive about singer-guitarist-songwriter Jesse Elliott‘s fabulously knotted musings, nor the happily pummeling, seriously catchy attack of Mark Charles (bass), Robby Cosenza (drums), Justin Craig (guitar, keys) and Tom Hnatow (guitar, pedal steel, banjo, lap steel).

By the time they take a long, much needed breath with “Heaven Can Wait” and “Study The Moon,” they’ve already crawled inside your gray matter, troubled your certainties and tickled your pineal gland for good measure. A line like “everyone shakes off the earth like a blanket” could be funereal but These United States find an inner second-line within apocalyptic subject matter, leaving one’s brains cells burning as their oars plow deep, black water. The facile comparison is Tom Waits, and it’s still a serious compliment even if the resemblance is only a surface one. What they share with Tom is his smarts, his gift for oddly curved melodies, undisguised emotion and swing where there’s not usually swing. These are all very good things and with TUS, who contain an “ocean in their shoes,” there’s more still to be unraveled, puzzled over and simply enjoyed on Crimes. This group is on the way to something big, fired up and hard charging, wrestling with our times, smiling in the face of all the shit coming down every living day. Based on this sophomore salvo, I think they’re going to triumph beautifully.

Edging along limbs to branch ends to break in
Pleasure and pain and pride and me
Shooting our mouths at their falling leaves
“We’re gonna make war, or we’re gonna make peace!”
I’m gonna lead the charge if it don’t lead me

Check out JamBase’s exclusive interview with These United States from April over here

Here’s the new video for “Get Yourself Home.” Check it and see if you don’t wiggle around a bit and start singing the chorus by the end of the cut.

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