Reviews of Hobo Postcards
Reviews of Hobo Postcards are rolling in! Here's text and links to a few that I like, from Leicester Bangs, FAME and www.muzikreviews.com:
This is raucous music that knows how to get in your face right from the off. You can’t accuse Jeff Andrew of holding anything back, of having a breather halfway through, or winding it all down nice 'n slow 'n easy at the close. He loads his instruments with his songs, and sets off playing. Almost an hour later we‘ve heard some pretty incredible tales, and the first three can almost sum up the whole journey: asking to be put back in the ground ("Wooden Dresses"), scraping across the country with no money or plan ("Jersey Hill"), and sleeping anywhere you can find ("Please Let Me Sleep On Your Floor"). The songs are poignant, heartfelt, muscular and very literal. I doubt it would take him long to turn most of these songs into parables that would grace any radio show reading. These are good stories, to travel with, alongside, on or in, or to just be around; remember, they may be a little brash, but they’re worthy of a careful listen. Think The Pogues at their most engaging, singing early Tom Waits. In fact, you almost get Mark Lanegan with Isobel Campbell on the title track... almost.
His helpers have brought much to the table that he’s put to good use. Without the added percussion and bass, the odd bits of brass and extra vocals, it might have been a harsher listen, as Jeff has a gruff approach that borders on a shout for vocals, and his guitar, fiddle, and resonator are ably backed up, resulting in a less bombastic sound. Take "When The Whistle Blows", where he forces his own voice to the edge yet again, but it’s given a lovely counterpoint by having a female voice weaving in and out of his own, thus providing a cushion for his raw tone. It’s a beautiful song, put together beautifully - not a strange event at all on “Hobo Postcards”. "Voice In The Floorboards" is just as magnificent and just as jaw dropping as its predecessor. They’re good enough to have been written by Jim Webb in his heyday.
He shows his savvy too, by dropping an out and out rocker into the mix, "Highway Girl", before the concluding four songs hammer home his message: there’s a new songwriter on the block, and he’s going to be around for quite some time, like it or not.
Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange (NH)
You're not to be blamed should you think a hurricane might be erupting as you pop Jeff Andrew's Hobo Postcards into the player. The guy doesn't do anything by half measures, exhibiting a gale-force personality in a style persuasively seductive while alarmingly realistic, a back roads troubador with a few things to say by way of viscera, nerve, and hard experience. Andrew wields a wickedly cutting pen, writing lyrics that are really darkside short stories packed to the gills with ribaldry, menace, psychotism, depravity, and a dim hope perpetually crushed beneath the hobnails of humanity's callousness and lies…basically a raunchy Bob Dylan with blood in his teeth. Despite all that, there's a cynic's warmth lurking on the borders.
The gent plays guitars, violin, and sings with a gravelly voice cobbled through a thousand nights under the stars in some wasteland or slum, and his compositional technique runs to the Immaculate Fools meet the Pogues meet Old Red (here) meet Tom Waits…with the borderline psychological damage of Kevin Coyne and the swampline saturnalia of The Woes (here), everything mashed up with adrenaline intensity. There's death, disease, and doom aplenty in this disc's collection of ominously ebony sagas, all delivered in a timbre sending shivers up the spine while fascinating the mind, a snake mesmerizing its feathery dinner.
Catch the howling fury and lunatic glee of I Want You to Haunt Me if you're aching for a demented sidetrip into impulsivity and fevered longing, but every turn in Hobo Pstcards hides lurking paranoia and demons spitting out extollations of hard luck, buggery, and duplicity. If this guy doesn't make it big, I'm gonna be pissed'er 'n shit. I already turned in my Top 20 of 2011 to Big Dave at FAME HQ, so, even before that catalogue goes to print, consider this to be #21. It's that damned good, and Andrew is such an intensely emoto-imagistic scribe that friends and family—hell, include his enemies as well!—might want to advise him to write a novel, just to hedge bets until the music world discontinues idolizing goopy cheerleader music and squirrely ballad soma. I'd buy a book of this guy's prose in a hot New York minute.
When he is not wandering the highways of North America and “writing hobo postcards on the highwayside at dawn,” Jeff Andrew finds the time to pick up his instruments and make some remarkable music. Based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Jeff’s main influences are cited as “Treehouses and Trainsmoke” that makes for a unique and wonderful listening experience. Hobo Postcards is the second album for Jeff Andrew and filled with melancholy, anger, despair, and perseverance. Get out a bottle of whiskey and enjoy.
“Wooden Dress” is a blistering opening song that shows off Jeff’s raw and powerful voice. I really enjoy the type of songs that tell a story, especially one with tastes of the open road. It sets a high standard for the rest of the album that is soon surpassed because this album is that good. “Jersey Hill” keeps the spirit of the first song with its tale of traveling with a hint of darkness in the narration. “Please Let Me Sleep On Your Floor” is a calm song with a touch of melancholy as the title alludes to. With the title of Hobo Postcards, cloudy days are expected to be the norm and that is not such a bad thing.
“What’s Going On In The Alleyway?” has frenzied atmosphere to it. It is a catchy and sing-along type of song with a twisted sense of humor. Well, it had me grinning. It is by far the shortest song, but it is also one of the more memorable. I very much enjoyed the anger I found in “The Wandering Dead,” especially the relaxed attitude the narrative voice displays toward the wrongs, but still keeps on going in spite of those wrongs. The most political song is one of the top songs. To keep it simple, “When The Whistle Blows” is a heartfelt and beautiful song.
“Voice In The Floorboards” is another magnificent song with a “If these walls could talk” theme to it with lyrical content on the same road as “The Wandering Dead.” It is not often that someone asks to be haunted, but that is exactly what is requested in “I Want You To Haunt Me.” It is the type of song that will leave listeners mesmerized and my favorite on the album. “Hobo Postcards” brings the album to a conclusion with everything that makes this album such a wondrous experience.
After listening to Hobo Postcards, Jeff Andrew is a name that is not soon to be forgotten. He is a true poet-musician with the talent to match. He is the Canadian Tom Waits and I look forward to the coming of more incredible music from him.
4.5/5