Have Gun, Will Travel – Postcards From The Friendly City

Over the past seven months there has been but one album nestled in my glove compartment, outlasting an impressive revolving door cast of the year’s best talent.  No, it’s not The Gaslight Anthem, it’s notAgainst Me!, nor Murder By Death, or even some twisted psychobilly explosion that those outside of Germany turn their noses up at – no, instead the band is Bradenton, Florida’s Have Gun, Will Travel; and the album is their sophomore effort, Postcards From The Friendly City.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love all of the above, but at least for me, each requires a certain time and place – a particular mental state if you will.  But not Have Gun, Will Travel.  No, Postcards transcends the moment, creating a masterful blend of tradition and spontaneity packaged in the rare dual gift of depth and accessibility.

From opening note to closing verse, Postcards achieves the perfect – yes, perfect – balance between narration, atmosphere, story telling, emotion, and instrumentals.  Every instrument, word, chorus, and novelty screams purpose.  It’s both the most personal and universally in-tune offering I can think of; and balances rich, gripping melody and dirt simple vocal hooks with a greater success than likely intended.  Every violin stroke, unique percussive flourish, and acoustic pluck just couldn’t come out any other way.  Even the packing presents the lyrics as a fold out newspaper, summing up the album as a collection of lively scenarios embodying the band’s Bradenton tenure.  There’s just so much to say about every line, but alas I must tear myself from universal claims of grandeur and land on some specifics.

With every track coming out absolutely exemplary I hate privileging one over another, so forgive my discrimination.  So here we go.  “Sons And Daughters Of The Guilded Age” is as good a starting point as any, and includes all of the aforementioned highs and lows, exemplifying the band’s careful marriage of nostalgia with the present.  The song opens with deeply contrasting imagery of today’s economic segregation, equating modern privilege with historical class divisions.  With his country tinged Death Cab For Cutie demeanor, Matt Burke opens, singing “Queen of plastic surgery and credit card receipts/child goes to bed to night without a bite to eat/prince denies a shilling to a beggar in the street/thoughtlessly retires to his presidential sweet,” at which point Burke justifies his jovial tone in rich sarcasm, painting a picture of a modern monarchy that “celebrates celebrity and all the joy it brings,” as we strengthen its reign through “worship at the alter of our plasma TV screens.”  The following chorus echoes such sentiment with a happy, “na na na na,” perfectly embodying society’s figurative willingness to dance and dream their way to the bottom.  And that’s just the first verse.  Through repeated song structure they analyze the present through the eyes of future civilizations cataloguing “our plastic parts to put them on display,” and eventually revisit that first refrain and all it’s jovial energy, but now with the modifier “deep and lonely grave.”  Taken altogether, “Sons And Daughters…” reads like a masters thesis and flows like a timeless indie-folk classic – a comparison I doubt I’ll be making any time soon.

Now I really don’t want to write an essay for every track, so I’m going to do a great disservice and skim over the some other great examples in the interest of time and space.  “Land Of The Living,” also jumps out as a deeply contemplative track, this time employing their lush soundscape for a deeply reflective, almost passive sound with a very active message – one that challenges listeners to look below life’s surface, and search for true meaning, even if it means leaving “the land of the living,” and “setting out for a new frontier,” in this case figuratively breaking free from Florida’s sleepy coast and setting out to make a mark – a good metaphor for Have Gun, Will Travel’s current trajectory and ambitions.

Across the album they reference historical explorers like Sir Francis Drake and Ferdinand Magellan, seamlessly inserting Shakespearian references (“Kerosene & Candle Light”), and mastering the art of the narrative with the most vivid, tempo shifting and suspenseful take on a backroom gambling scenario turned greed provoked standoff I’ve ever bared witness to (“The Ballad Of Asa Dalton”).

I wish I could go on, but there’s nothing more I can say.  Postcards is the ultimate indie folk experience, and it does so with a humbling modesty all the while breaking free from the narrow confines of classic Americana and creating something new from something old. Have Gun, Will Travel has made an album easily appreciable by those who love traditional folk, and given the chance, should convert many a skeptic.  Those who think art can’t be at once academic and a true pleasure need look no further.

Will Postcards land as my album of the year?  At this point that’s a definite maybe.  But one thing likely won’t change: Have Gun, Will Travel will not be beat by anything in their genre.  Unquestionably a new benchmark in originality and musicianship.