Johnny Hickman is a great guy and an awesome guitarist. As the lead guitarist for Cracker (QRO spotlight on), he plays the engaging sideman to singer/guitarist David Lowery’s more sarcastic frontman. He also plays a mean guitar – and always looks like he’s having a blast doing it. Solo side debut Palmhenge was a strong album with a killer single, “Friends” (QRO video), that featured him & Lowery at their most anti-hero ironic (and funny). Unfortunately, that irony is almost entirely gone on Tilting, traded in for preachy platitudes above still-strong rock ‘n’ roll.
It all starts with opener “Measure of a Man”, a piece as preachy as that title could sadly indicate. It picks up to some degree with “Destiny Misspent”, as the platitudes are wryer, but then hits its nadir with “Not Enough”. Political music almost always feels heavy-handed these days – we don’t have a Bob Dylan, let alone a Woody Guthrie – but Hickman pulled it off fairly well on the blue collar “Great Decline” on Palmhenge. Yet “Not Enough” plumbs depths last seen in Conor Oberst’s “When the President Talks To God”, with an over-the-top gung-ho American narrator who makes the ‘ugly American’ look refined and realistic (and this is from someone who toured in Iraq for the troops).
If you can get past that, the rest of Tilting mixes some good, if not outstanding, rock ‘n’ roll with some less drastic platitudes. “Dream Along With Me” and “Drunkard’s Epiphany” are at least sweet in their platitudes, while “Takin’ Me Back” and “Another Road” are just good rock ‘n’ roll. “Sick Cynthia Thing” is a little grating in its pop, and the blues-sly “Papa Johnny’s Arms” would be revelatorier if blues wasn’t everywhere these days, but the catch to “Our Little Movie” overwhelms that the metaphor is overused, while “Resurrection Train” does stand out as just some great blues-rock (with no platitudes).
In Cracker, Johnny Hickman lets David Lowery work his lyrical magic, evoking a down-to-earth, blue-collar American humor that few else can match – including Hickman himself, who can’t help but let his preaching get in the way of his rocking on Tilting.
MP3 Stream: “Resurrection Train“
