Greg Freeman: Burnover

What even is alt-country these days? It seems it’s just indie rock with some twang. Much in the same way hip-hop has morphed into dance music, which has been spun into mainstream pop. In other words, alt-country didn’t grow out of country. It spawned from some amalgamation of indie rock and alt singer-songwriter. Because when anyone writes music on a guitar it just feels natural to add a drawl. Even if, like Greg Freeman, you’re from the distinctly not-Southern D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. And, yes, I know Maryland is mid-Atlantic or something — and I’m sure those people have accents — but Freeman definitely hits an accent that sounds of a genre rather than of a location.

The first 15 seconds of this record do an uncanny Pavement imitation. A band that isn’t alt-country per se, but definitely lean into that inland Cali slacker thing that can sometimes have the tossed-off quality of the “western” half of country & western. A delineation I never bothered to think about past the joke from The Blues Brothers. But I really think it’s a thing. One that I will have to Google and deep dive on after I research who invented the radio diode. And what a radio diode is. But Greg Freeman’s sound shouldn’t be pigeonholed into alt-country per se, but with the squishiness of genres these days, it’s as good a classification as any.  Though he does mix in instrumentation and qualities from quite a few corners of the musical landscape. Bringing a good blend of alt-singer/songwriter energy (which means lots of verses with lots of words that sometimes rhyme and sometimes don’t) and even some definite Tom Petty guitar rock. And 80s-energy saxophone. And some less circus-like Firewater vibes (especially on the track “Salesman”). Because why not. Point is, his approach is pretty kitchen sink indie. There you go: kitchen-sink indie®.

It’s interesting how an album filled with various sounds, and a singer with a pretty unique high-pitched warble, could get a little blurry around the edges. It’s not as if the music isn’t tight and the production actually pretty strong, but something about the bar-band backing and almost jam-y at times cacophony starts to make some of the songs blend. But, again, it’s not as if they don’t have hooks, but something in these tunes feel at times like the less dynamic Pinegrove tracks. But with their own personality. I don’t have much of a handle on Ben Folds but between the piano and the somewhat shapeshifting non-genre genre it may align with him in some way. The last two tracks of the ten-track album are slow, plodding album filler if I’m being honest. Which isn’t great — but the rest of the record is dynamic and interesting enough to make me wonder what direction he’ll take things next.