When Tom at Twangville gave me The Wells Outcasts Will Make a Strong Nation cd for review, he told me I would like it because it reminded him of X and John Doe and he knows what a big fan I am. He was absolutely right. The harder songs especially have the stripped down punk with a little twang style of X. When using female backing vocals you can definitely visualize John Doe and Exene singing together. Other songs are more roots influenced but still have rock undertones. Lyrically, the album is full of dark and haunting folk tales of people gone astray not unlike characters that have haunted John Doe’s songs over the years.The stories in the songs on Outcasts are literary in nature, which is not surprising since songwriter Robert Loss has an MFA in creative writing and teaches English in their home base of Columbus, OH, home to other alt-country acts like Two Cow Garage. Talk about anti-heroes, we have characters here that Cormac McCarthy would love to create. We have someone, who murders the Steinbeck folk hero Tom Joad for a loaf of bread and parlays it to a successful political career. We also find a nomadic loser sabotaging a Pentecostal tent revival to keep his girl from getting saved. Is nothing sacred? The answer is no. I hope these guys don’t stay under the radar for too long they deserve to be found. A lot of bands are jumping on the Americana band wagon these days but The Wells definitely deserve attention.
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