Review: Coyote Motel ‘The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South’
By Hal Horowitz
Albums that are soundtracks from fictional movies, or in this case a documentary, can be uneven affairs. Without visuals to accompany the music (which was created for that purpose), the audio can be, and often is, compromised.
But the best ones (think landmarks like “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” “Shaft,” “Purple Rain,” or “Super Fly”) yield songs that stand on their own as unique and compelling aural adventures, despite, or perhaps because of, not having the film’s images to enhance them.
This is one of them.
While Coyote Motel’s songs for the documentary The River are unlikely to register the commercial success of those aforementioned classics, frontman Ted Drozdowski and his four piece band have crafted ten enthralling tracks that grab the listener without seeing, or even knowing about, the movie they were created for.
The 68-minute feature about three Southern rivers—the Mississippi, Cumberland and Tallahatchie—“embraces musical performances, storytelling, light art, aerial dance (!),and cultural history” as its press release tells us.
Sounds intriguing.
Anyone who has followed Drozdowski’s career as a successful editor, writer, musical historian, frontman for The Scissormen and, as of 2018, Coyote Motel, knows that everything he touches is professional, sometimes edgy, but always artistically conceived. Score another triumph with this project, surely his most ambitious and widely encompassing venture.
Drozdowski’s eclectic, imaginative aesthetic is on full display as he crafts ten tracks that run blues, often with psychedelic touches, folk, swamp music and gutsy rock through his creative mindset. Singing with a dusky voice somewhere between Chuck Prophet and Nick Cave, he lays down an early marker with the opening “Tupelo.” The jagged, combustible rocker with searing guitar and dueling gospel-inflected vocals from band member Luella is some of the most chilling and intense six minutes of music you’ve likely heard in a long while.
The approach isn’t quite as mind-blowing but just as taut on further selections such as the effervescent yet laconic “Long Distance Runner” and the gripping, heartbeat driven ballad “Still Among the Living” (“I’m haunted by the specter of your will,” he sings as his reverbed guitar defines the eerie atmosphere).
The film is referenced in lyrics and especially titles of “The River” and “The River Runs Forever,” the latter also sung by Luella in a voice inspired by Dolly Parton, albeit darker. The mood gets agitated on “Down in Chulahoma” (where “the water flows like moonshine and the whiskey tastes like rain”) as Drozdowski drives scorching runs influenced by Southern juke joint musicians like Junior Kimbrough. On “Trouble” he borrows the drum pattern that thudded behind Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life,” laying a distorted slide over it and transforming the song into a jaw dropping rocker Pop would envy.
We move to mesmerizing country blues on the following “Homegoing” where Luella again works her Parton-styled magic before Drozdowski takes off into David Gilmour-shaped outer space.
Everything about The River pulsates with the energy of, well, a rolling, organic waterway. Not only is it not necessary to see the film to appreciate the soundtrack, this remarkable batch of songs might be more powerful as a sound experience where you can close your eyes and create your own optical expedition.
The River Trailer See Here
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