Front Page Reviews & AIR

So swift and so vicious are the carnival rides

and the carnival barker will yell your name for a bribe

We got billboards for love and Japanese cars

It ain’t rare to hear the street lights call themselves stars

The more that I learn the more that I cheat 

I come from the nation of heat

Joe Pug was a playright student before he ditched school, packed up his car, and lit out for Chicago, where he worked as a carpenter by day and a songwriter by night.  It makes sense that he wanted to go from writing lines for other people to carving his own verses out of the weathered wood of his acoustic guitar.  What isn’t explainable is how gut-wrenching and illuminating those first songs would be.  Pug’s EP Nation of Heat (2008) is made up of seven songs that cast firelight on everything from heartbreak and loss to drugs to politics.  The album maps a well-beaten line across America, lamenting a loss of what we might have stood for while avoiding the crooked cliches of easy answers.  One can picture Pug hammering these songs together carefully, nails in his mouth, fingers bleeding.  In June of 2010, the second EP In The Meantime was given away free and features a similar dose of honesty and poetry, at times almost sounding as if Pug himself is straining his deep, reedy vocals as he tries to make sense of the world.

Wondering if you read that right, FREE? Thinking there might be a catch to the giveaway; some absent songs, a plethora of emails, bad sound quality?  Nope.  This is an artist who began his career by sending his fans unlimited copies of a free 2 song album, covering the cost of mailings at his own expense.  To date, he’s sent 15,000 CDs to 50 states and 14 different countries, and his toil has paid off; he has toured with the likes of M. Ward, Steve Earl, and Josh Ritter, and played festivals such as Newport Folk and Lollapalooza.

And then came the Messenger, guns blazing.  "This one, it's like that thing where there's an explosion and you realize how many options there are in the world," Pug explains when referring to the 2010 release.  The result is an album that brings the kick of snare and the slap of bass to the raw strumming of prior records. Nothing is overdone, but there is more of a richness of texture, which brings attention to the lyrics and blunt sentiment in songs like "How Good You Are."  The message here is that the artist is growing and changing with every whack of the hammer, and the art reflects that.

Brutal honesty and the ability to captivate audiences and listeners alike aren't the only reasons that Joe Pug's work shines in the fleet-foxhole of the flourishing new Indie-Folk scene.  This is music that gathers inspiration from the past but rarely rests on it's laurels.  The style may be throwback (and listening to Pug may cause you to revisit Dylan, Guthrie and other long lost friends, but since when is throwing on Nashville Skyline a bad thing?) but the voice is something welcome and new.  It is hope and confession, broken strings and trust, dusty boots and bourbon and cans of PBR before they were trendy.  It is fingers calloused from the galloping press of major chords,  verse and chorus, bewilderment and enlightenment, bender and hangover.  Beyond the  of retro and hipster, Pug's songs will grab you by the neck, or sit next to you, ask how your day was, and maybe buy you a drink.  I'd go with the PBR.