The Knitters - The Modern Sounds of The Knitters

Genre alt-country Publisher Zoe Records External Links Official Website Zoe Records

As the opening chords of "Easy Goin' Sunday" ominously roll over your lobes, try to imagine what twenty years of anticipation feels like. When's the last time you waited that long for anything good and true? Or even waited a solid week for an extraneous desire? Everything's easily accessible. A damn good Reuben? Easy. Micheal's on Beacon St. and Harvard Ave. A good backrub? This Asian girl Nancy'll fix you up. A mother's love? If you don't have it by now, you can stop checking for hints here. But twenty years. Ahhh, now there's a powderkeg of expectations and pent-up angst that can submarine even the best albums. This quality is indeed what we see before us. A sophomore effort a full two decades after the fact from The Knitters, X's 1985 side project that brought the alternative country genre into existence. "Sunday" serves short, dark notice that The Knitters have absorbed these years, and with them new angry grudges, and at times, sombre resolutions.

The instant crowd-pleasers include high-paced jaunts "Give Me Me Flowers While I'm Living," "Skin Deep Town," and "I'll Go Down Swinging." Each involves important lessons from The Knitters to you. "Flowers" unofficially opens the album, with Exene wailing along, like she's already haunting your ass from the grave, letting us all know to push the polite social conventions aside and enjoy life's beauty in the now, goddammit. "Skin Deep" quickens, bass notes rolling down a hill to Ft. Lauderdale, the sunny, shallow beachtown of Spring Breaks past and present. Not a soul is spared their wrath, mocking the young girls who "wear / wet T-shirts to bed" as well as the Reluctantly Aging, with "winter [being] what they fear most." "Swinging" should be on every bar jukebox in America not only because it's a classic anthemic rocker, but because it's good business. You see, life has taken some shots at you and running away won't be solving any of them. You are going to stand up and face them...tomorrow. Because tonight, you are going to get BELLIGERUNK, SCREW AROUND, and FIGHT. When you recover, THEN will be the time to deal with your demons; I can't think of a better bar slogan (or therapy) than that.

Of course, life isn't all barroom brawls and promiscuous sex (besides mine). Alongside the frivolities of life, some powerful themes get bandied about in "Dry River", "Long Chain On", and "Rank Stranger." John Doe mourns for all the peaceful joys that have been erradicated in modern times. His childhood swimming spot barren, his orchard bulldozed, and finally his love faded. In spite of this, he has faith that healthy rains will come as will future love. "Chain" is a song Beckett would have appreciated, that convoluted bastard. A shackled vagrant is invited in from the cold by benevolent JD. Food is given and prayers of thanks are spoken. However, when attempts are made to free the man, he resists, choosing to remain a slave in lieu of the responsibilities and trials of being free. "Stranger" investigates the feelings of isolation that can reach all of us. The sense that society can seem like one big love-fest to which we're not invited. Naively or bravely, it is hoped that in heaven "no one will be / a rank stranger to me." Hearing the rolling guitars and reined-in passion this song expertly employs, one can't help but think even the staunchest of athiests would flare in a moment of faith. If not, in a moment of sadness that - screw twenty years - some beauty has to wait until we're dead, flowers in hand.