David Cowling - AmericanaUK
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Canadian gives credence to Swedish label
This is the sort of music you expect to be delivered with every second or third hand truck, the more beat up the better. Take a rust-bucket, engine-knocking, exhaust blowing, tyre-whining beater, sell with this CD and instantly the prospective driver jams up the volume doesn’t notice the faults, signs on just to get the CD, foolproof. A mixture of John Fogerty and Jim White, underneath the bluster there is a genuine eye for detail and storytelling that doesn’t get in the way of a decent riff.
As a calling card ‘The Wreck of Tammy Whelan’ is a slap in the face with a rolled up copy of ‘No Depression,’ we don’t need that sort of thing around here, we’ve got stripped down unpretentious music with a heart. A heart that serves up ‘Stone Cold Hearts’ a sepia toned paean to the golden age of Hank Williams and ‘You’re Still Everywhere’ Nick Lowe armed with a broken heart and a song as sharp as a broken beer bottle. ‘She’s My Speed’ is the type of thing Tom Petty can’t manage these days.
Sure some of this is a bit unreconstructed, some of it even sinks into jokey blues but all the weaknesses do is to throw into relief the nuggets like ‘Sang like a Bird’. It’s a shame Fournier is hidden away on a Swedish label - he’s powerful enough to make a noise in his homeland.
Date review added: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Reviewer: David Cowling
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Frederick Turgis - www.jumpingfrom6to6.com
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Joe Fournier is the real deal
This is Joe Fournier’s fourth album and he plays almost all instruments on it, just helped for a couple of songs by a dobro and a fiddle player. Fournier simply plays American music with soul and sincerity, just a man, his roots and his songs. You’ll find some elements of John Fogerty here, an intonation of Bruce Springteen there a bit of blues and a good dose of Bakersfield everywhere. The songs are very well crafted with melodies that hook you from the start and perfectly written texts. You won’t find weird turn or words you never use in your everyday life, this are simple words straight from the heart, like his music. These are also the hardest to use but when you’re successful you come close to classics like Chuck Berry, John Fogerty or Dave Alvin. There’s also plenty of humour in his songs like “Bad Record Collection” in which Joe complains about his girl and her bad taste when it comes to music. With lyrics like “all that top 10 fluff goes to work on my libido/turns my kingbee to the size of a mosquito/even though she’s standin’ there/dressed in nothin’ but her long blond hair” it’s a killer. I could also quote “Bigger Than Actual Size” which is hilarious too “…a little botox here, a little silicone there/ was like the exorcist with Linda Blair/ she wanna make it bigger than actual size” and further in the song these line that sums up perfectly the Nashville way of making music “it was a Fender champ and a nice Tele / clean as a whistle you could feel it in the belly / the producer frowned, we gotta get that sound / like the truck commercial and the boys uptown / they took a rack of gear, you could hardly hear / that sweet tele twang just disappeared…”. And if he can make you laugh he’s able to make you cry the following minute, just listen to “Sang Like A Bird”. Anyway, I could go on for hours but you just have to know that Joe Fournier is the real deal.
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John Davy - Net Rhythms (UK)
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Brilliant stuff, totally recommended
In the beginning, rock and roll was all about youthful rebellion, exuberantly upsetting its olders and betters. These days, in as far as rock and roll can be discerned in youth music, it's pretty tame stuff - fun sometimes, but not likely to set the world alight. What a joy, then, to find older guys like Joe Fournier can use rock and roll as an entirely appropriate medium for songs that, lyrically, could easily be characterised as folk. Joe writes songs that come straight from life; vignettes, sometimes, and stories with longer time frames at others, but always truthful and always with immense good humour.
Once I got to know the words (with the aid of the lyric sheet) I've listened to this album with an ear to ear grin, from beginning to end, and I just long to catch Joe at a gig sometime so I can sing along with the chorus of 'Gooned Up':
'Liquor and wine, wine and liquor/One'll get ya goin', but the other one's quicker/Yeah you end up regretting it everytime/Go-oo-oned up on liquor and wine!'.
It appears Joe's put this record togerther pretty much by himself, and, if that's true, it's an astonishing achievement; there's a lot of instrumentation in here and it sounds like a hot band having fun. The slide guitar on the Bo Diddley-ish 'Juanita Dog Walk', and again on 'Thumbful', is just ace; throughout, there's just so much energy that you could believe the whole thing was recorded live. He's been compared favourably with John Fogerty in the past but, for me, Joe Fournier's much more fun. Listening to him is like a cloud lifting, like feeling 30 years (in my case) younger, remembering how exciting rock music can be; he reminds me of all the most soulful rockers I've ever heard - Graham Parker and John Hiatt, to name two - but the way he allies his total rocking commitment to such a sense of fun is all but unique. Brilliant stuff, totally recommended, and there's the promise of a European tour this year to look forward to. Hooray!
John Davy - Net Rhythms - February 2008
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