Tim Easton
Special 20
New West Records
**** (of 5)

Tim Easton has done It again. Wait, that's not right. He's done it before. No. That sounds like he's re-hashing his previous albums. Pretend you haven't read this paragraph. Pretend that the review starts at the next paragraph...

Special 20, Tim Easton's "debut solo album" isn't really a solo album, and it's been re-released on New West Records, so for some of us, it doesn't seem like a debut. Semantics aside, it's a splended CD.

"Just Like Home" sounds like a countryfied 16 Horsepower song. Razing vocals through some sort of distortion that's bordering on not redlining. The song isn't quite as frantic as 16hp can be, but it's just as driving. Plus the instrumental credits include foot stomp, homemade snare, washboard and sneeze. Beat that.

The third song, "Torture Comes to Mind" is a little more poppy sounding, but the lyrical content betrays something more than the usual top 40 fare. For example: "I pissed away most of my youth in some lazy one street rock roll band. And the rest standing on some foreign corner with a shovel in my hand- and a hat at my feet."

Less than halfway through the album, Tim falls on a universal truth. "All the Pretty Girls Leave Town." I spent the years that all the pretty girls leave town in Casper, Wyoming, and can attest to the truth in that statement. At the end of the song, he asks "When you gonna leave this town?" It's the five minute thirty-two second way of telling a girl she's pretty.

There's another seven songs on the album. They're all good. Some of them are better than that.

If you're a fan of just the sound of Tim's other recording, "The Truth About Us," this disc may not fit your criteria. However, if you like the songwriting and feeling of the lyrics on "The Truth..." this disc may just find a perminant home in your stereo.

-Django

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