Thank You For Clapping. 16 Horsepower albums reviewed by New Musical Express

Thank You For Clapping

16 Horsepower - album reviews

from UK magazine the New Musical Express

Sackcloth 'N' Ashes (NME 05-04-97)
IMPENDING MILLENNIUM making you yearn for some apocalyptic blues prophecy? Then, striding out of the American badlands and speaking in tongues, Denver's 16 Horsepower are just the thing - in one hand they clutch a Bible, in the other a blood-spattered blunt instrument.

You don't need to know that singer David Eugene Edwards is the son of a preacher, man, to know that he spent too much of his youth staring up at a pulpit. It's there in every yelp of his part-fire-and-brimstone, part-whisky-sodden vocal style. He is perpetually torn between devout believer and congenital sinner with a tarnished halo slipping below the knees. And, for much of this debut they manage to balance paranoia-streaked meditations on redemption, lust, murder and retribution with fearsome blues wailing and demented twanging country guitar. 'Haw' is a skin-crawling howl from a dank and forbidding place, and 'Heel On The Shovel' is local folklore recalling Nick Cave's 'Murder Ballads'. Wherein Edwards will always call a spade a handy implement for digging a shallow grave, whilst warning: "Everyone will see and everyone will know/That boy, you reap what you sow".

But then there are ill-advised hillbilly moments, and more instances of redneck than on a Benidorm beach. Witness swathes of braces-plucking banjo that make pivotal scenes in Deliverance seem like a night out in Camden, while the Deep South atmosphere is at times so over-pronounced you can almost hear someone, way out in the backwoods, squealing like a pig. So 'Red Neck Reel' is just that, right down to the irritating "Yee-haws!" and inescapable image of Uncle Jedburr grooving in his dungarees.

Great music for a claustrophobic film then, but otherwise, a 5 out of 10.

By Jim Alexander

Low Estate (NME 13-09-97)

A JOKE: what did the cult film director shout at his huskies? "JarMUSCH! JarMUSCH!!" Ha! That joke isn't very funny, but then again 16 Horsepower are hardly a bundle of laughs whizzing around in the washing machine of oblivion, either. So there.

Four men from Colorado, USA, the Horsies are stern-faced sorts addicted to pleasures past. More specifically, they relish the cranky old warmth of techno-scaring objects such as banjos, glockenspiels and, of course, the hurdy-gurdy. Chuck in the baccy-chewing bile of Nick Cave - both musically and in the sense of the backwater belligerence of his book, And The Ass Saw The Angel - and this eight-legged grouch machine is suitably armed to proffer a litany of leery tales and dusty songs about (spit) guurrrrlls and such like.

A scruffily affecting barroom brawl, much of 'Low Estate' is, too. At their best 16 Horsepower pile through the stirring likes of 'For Heaven's Sake' (the Bunnymen on moonshine, essentially) and the grizzly 'Sac Of Religion' with the attitude and aplomb of a severely pissed-off preacherman. There are rickety bits, manic howlings and galloping guitars and, somewhat predictably, the odd outburst of yodelling.

Admittedly, even in a post-Bad Seeds world, some of 'Low Estate' is hard to take; when the footstomping traditionalism of 'Black Lung' brings to mind a line-dance club in a Scout hut you get the feeling that you're not quite down on their level. But any album which starts with a track called 'Brimstone Rock' is hardly designed with the faint-hearted in mind, so we'll refrain from the cheesily ubiquitous Dukes Of Haphazard pun. Sort of. Southern discomfort, anyone? 7 out of 10.

By Simon Williams

Secret South (NME 14-04-00)

Influenced by folk's more whacked-out, gloomy, voodoo-visioned forebears, 16 Horsepower continue to narrate their haunting campfire-punk yarns without a modern-day care in the world.

Instead, David Eugene and his melancholia-drenched posse of LA dreamers prefer the dark grandeur that only comes with mournful swathes of countryfied guitar, of heavy-hearted violins, pianos and accordions, of lonesome banjo-picking and Ennio Morricone tautness. Add a dash of Dylan-esque roots-philosophy and the result is a forlorn dustbowl saloon bar where Nick Cave woefully sinks bourbons with The Gun Club only moments after a loved one's funeral parade.

There's scant evidence of the year 2000 within the desolate pleas of 'Burning Bush', the ghostly magnificence of 'Praying Arm Lane' or the superlative rendition of trad classic 'Wayfaring Stranger', but 16 Horsepower aren't ones to fret about such misleading concerns. For them, the objective was to make a fucking brilliant album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern coolness is a jester that's one misplaced quip away from being the lion's breakfast. And, of course, they've succeeded. Sometimes, you just have to accept that there's, ahem, nowt as pure as folk. 9/10

By Darren Johns