Thursday, April 29 2010 9:00 PM
21+ $20.00
Lincoln Hall
Forget everything you thought you knew about Shooter Jennings.
The acclaimed singer-songwriter is kicking off a bold new chapter in his career with new band HIEROPHANT and Black Ribbons (Black Country Rock/Rocket Science Ventures), a mind-blowing 70-minute opus that completely obliterates genre distinctions. On this unprecedented work, twanging dobros coexist with Nintendo chipsets; brutally assaultive passages alternate with moments of unabashed tenderness, and surreal Floydian soundscapes float above smoking slabs of whiskey-soaked southern soul. It’s an electrifying thrill ride across a dense, dark and gloriously decadent musical landscape.
At its core, Black Ribbons is a concept album about truth—searching for it, locating it, wrestling with it and eventually coming to terms with it. From the opening track (and lead single) “Wake Up!,” a pummeling psychotropic stomp that sets the album’s tone, to the synth-injected paranoiac anthem “When The Radio Goes Dead,” this elliptical narrative takes the listener on a harrowing, life-affirming and altogether rapturous journey.
Binding the whole thing together with alchemical deftness is acclaimed novelist Stephen King, who provides the voice of Will O’ The Wisp, a late-night talk-radio host who is in the last hour of his final broadcast before the airwaves are overtaken by “government-approved and regulated transmissions.” In retaliation for his muzzling, he speaks his mind like never before, punctuating his rants with selections from the discography of Hierophant. Throughout the album’s 14 songs, Will O’ The Wisp flits in and out, painting an apocalyptic picture of what America could become in the not-so-distant future, while offering his loyal listeners—from whom he is about to be permanently cut off—the unvarnished truth.
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