Postcards from X - Big Lazy
Recommended by: Orcrist86
This was pitched to me as "some sort of crime jazz", with the promise that "listening to the album is like smoking unfiltered cigarettes and cruising for trouble in a beat up old car". And that definitely sounds about right, though it's much less on the jazz end of things that I expected.
There's a lot going on in these 11 tracks. Bits of it remind me of a much more subdued Gogol Bordello, while there's also some desert stoner vibers reminiscnet of Kyuss or early Young Widows (though, again, much more subdued than either of those bands), particulary in the opening tracks.
The jazz side of things starts to emerge a bit more strongly on third track Glitter Gulch, which has a strong element of Peggy Lee's Fever going on underneath some twangy guitar work that remidns me very strongly of Hank Marvin and The Shadows. Tonally it swings between whisky-soaked noir and sunbaked western in a way that I really enjoy.
That's not to say that this is a perfect album and there were definitely a couple of skips for me, particularly in the middle of the record. Drug Czar starts strong but loses its way fast despite only being 1:56 long, and France similarly outstays its welcome. Big Lazy is at its best when its slow and brooding, and while I appreciate the attempt to vary the pace on a few tracks I think those more upbeat moments are the weakest on the record (with the exception of To Hell in a Handbasket, which is great). I would have been much happier with this were it a 6 or 7 track EP with no flab.
Interestingly enough, Spotify auto-played The Onliest from Big Lazy's 2019 album Dear Trouble immediately after this album finished and I liked it a lot more than anything on Postcards From X, so I may have to add that album to my playlist and give it a spin in the near future.