Album Notes

"Featured currently on our jukebox, the Soda band (for short) are an ingenious creation who assimilate the American music lexicon and bend it into new and wonderful shapes. Their nearest competition would be The Pogues, although they sound nothing alike. The Pogues famously took old Irish drinking songs, traditional ballads, and the mystique of the Emerald Isle and shot it through the veins of punk rock. Soda & Co. are doing the same for Americana. Soda's gruff and mysterious voice recalls the haunted Tom Waits, and his tales of lying women and sinners and early death bring to mind the warped world of Nick Cave. On the catchy ditty "July" you can hear the multi-limbed band cranking through accordions, guitars, traps, bass, mandolin, and more instruments I can't identify. When they play a "small" version of the band live, there are 8 members. The full band has 16. They are moved by the pure love of folk, blues, and punk like Frankenstein's monster was moved by a jolt of lightning.

Soda used to light up the frets in the kinetic pop punk band Wax, and among the many other members are more than a few seasoned hardcore punks. Theirs is the twilight world of dirt roads and mysterious groves of trees and the open prairie full of strangers on the outskirts of town. It's dusty and greasy, tender and cold-hearted all at once. "Lakeshore" is a sad-eyed waltz, a goodbye letter from a man who just can't be bothered to try anymore. "Christine" features some plucked and reverbed guitar and shuffling rhythms and some crazy blowing on a mic'd harmonica. These 10 tracks are all vignettes of American gothic, stories of the cold landscape of the great empty spaces, played by a fantastically crowded band. On slower numbers, like "Sinnerman" the multitude of musicians create their own thread in the tapestry of the song. Far from playing all over each other, they open up the space in the music."

-review by www.culturebunker.com


"Like the bastard lovechild of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Tom Waits in Sin City, shitfaced via Jack Daniels. Or ZZTop on Morphine... I couldn't decide which."

-review by some lady on the internet