Rating: 6/10
Although my street cred may irreversibly turn to dust, I kind of like this record. While most alt-country artists take advantage of the momentum created by Richard Buckner, Will Oldham and Ryan Adams – sounding merely pictorial and unashamedly flat – The Strugglers offer a more prosaic association with a certain folksy American tradition. You Win takes no conceptual jump but the band, hailing from North Carolina’s "Paris of the Piedmont," Carrboro, manages to savagely grow early seeds still bearing fruit.
It’s not an original idea, though – it never was, really. And it definitely stretches back to Neil Young, (Smog) and the like. But The Strugglers do so in a defiantly manner, which is half the way to prevent their final work from getting a depreciative look. Always exploring an introverted terrain, these songs possess the comfortable scent of a fireplace burning constantly on a Sunday afternoon.
From "The Rejection Letter," a spacious, silent outburst of restrained anger, to the self-titled epilogue, this album is eminently coherent, a solemn chant of the disenchanted, if you will. Does my heart feel warmer at the completion of these 50 minutes? Only slightly. Nevertheless, I can see this was the only way songwriter Brice Randall Bickford II had found for his music to keep pace with his ideas.
Let all music history fall down like yellow, aged print matter – by that time, The Strugglers’ page will probably remain blank and this record will feel like a cucumber in the gardener’s ass. But for now, it’s no crime to crank these songs up, incorporate the solitude of reclusive numbers like "Necrophilia" and "Distant Demands," and contemplate the big black hole on the wall.
Enjoy the inertia provided by the guitars, the banjos, the drums, and the rich string and piano arrangements. The next Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy record is only a few weeks away to warm up fall evenings.
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