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Two Cow Garage
The Wall Against Our Back
Shelterhouse Records (USA)
Sonic Rendezvous Records SRV 020 (Europe)
By Marianne Ebertowski
 Thank heaven bands like this still
exist; a bunch of angry young men that play their music loud
and make no concessions to fashion or other forms of (un)political
correctness. I guess it's the punk rocker in me talking
that feeling of wanting to bang your head against the wall and
being convinced that you are able to break it (the wall, not
the head). That feeling of immortality and invincibility that
suffers badly and fades away when you get older, but never dies
until you do. It's bands like the Two Cow Garage that bring it
back just for a little while till frustration and fear
take over again, but just for that little while it feels real
good.
The Wall Against Our Back is the second release of
this twenty-something rowdy trio from Columbus, Ohio. They play
the sort of adrenaline-loaded, ferocious pre "No Depression"
cow punk Jason & the Scorchers, the Gun Club and X introduced
to their stunned audiences in the early eighties. All three of
them grew up in small town Ohio and, understandably, wanted to
get the hell out of there. For Marc Schnabel (guitar and vocals),
Dustin Harigle (drums and vocals) and Shane Sweeney (bass and
vocals), music was the one way ticket out of Bucyrus and Lancaster
respectively and, considering the band's grueling touring scheme,
it looks like they intend to stay away from their home towns
as long as possible.
For their new album, they went all the way to Denton, Texas
where, with the help of Mr. Slobberbone Brent Best, they recorded
thirteen songs in about nine days and hit the road again. This
energetic no-nonsense approach gives the album the appropriate
urgency. Two Cow Garage play songs with titles like "Make
it out Alive," "Burn in Hell" and "Smell
of Blood" that are exactly about what you expect them to
be about (boredom, desperation, violence.) They play and sing
them with such ferocity it's as though their lives depended on
it. I guess, in a way that is exactly what the band is about;
fighting for your dreams with your back against the wall or rather
the wall against your back, as they put it themselves in the
title-song that closes the album.
There is a great chemistry between the three of them that
makes the music sound tight and compact. Occasionally other musicians
join in to give a song an extra dimension, but guitar, bass,
drums, three-way-harmonies sing-along-choruses and heaps of passion
do the trick without any outside help most of the time.
Scott Danbom does a fine pacifying piano job in the otherwise
angry "Burn in Hell." He keeps the song from exploding
like a musical landmine and, seemingly, encouraging the band
to continue on a quieter note (beginning of "135".)
But the anger level rises soon. Harigle is a formidable drummer,
Schnabel sounds like Ohio's Mick Jones and stalwart bassist Sweeney
is the never missing link between the two. In the love-going-wrong
song "Saturday Night," (acoustic guitar only) Schnabel
proves he is a potentially great singer, once he stops shouting.
Maybe that's for later, something to look forward to, once the
shouting days are over.
One of my favorites is the pissed-off love-gone-totally-wrong
cow punk two-step "If this is Home," a blazing anthem
of blind fury that probably everybody would love to sing at least
once in a lifetime. Even angrier and almost even faster is "Smell
of Blood," which is about picking up your teeth after a
fight. "Brand New July," a countrified punk ballad
(if such a thing doesn't exist, Two Cow Garage has just invented
it) is a welcome relief after all that gory violence, even though
the farewell-to-love lyrics are rather grim and Schnabel's voice
sounds eerily Earlish at times.
The best two songs are wisely kept until the end of the album.
The moving, desolate"Hillbilly," written by hometown
buddy Sean Beal and featuring Word Williams on pedal steel, throws
all the bitterness and frustration of being born into a certain
place right into your face: "Hillbillyyou know it just grounds
you to places, the whole world is just out of your reaches."
If that cuts deeply, so does the title song "The Wall Against
Our Back," again with Williams on pedal steel. It's about
a band and the music biz and about signing a contract and it
sounds like a funeral song. Wanna know why? Get the album!
In a way Two Cow Garage sound very much like Ohio's answer
to Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers without the blatant politics,
but with the same horror of and revolt against the restrictions
certain places carry. Don't expect musical or lyrical sophistication
from this lot, at least not yet. What you can expect, however,
is an injection of energy and righteous anger, an uplifting experience
we all badly need once in a while. The Wall Against Our Back
is the perfect album for all young folks growing up in desperate
places and all the rest of us who got stuck in desperate places.
It's also the perfect album to pogo along to and annoy your parents,
kids, partners, neighbors and employers with.
www.twocowgarage.com
www.sonicrendezvous.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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