Sing Like We Used to, Dance When You Want To

Had Jeff Probst not pulled the names Ozzy and Coach out of his hat as which former contestants would go for redemption on the new season of Survivor, the Bing Crosby / Davie Bowie Award for most random pairing may have gone to Needtobreathe who opened up for Taylor Swift on her latest tour. Swift is best known for her diary style lyrics set against shiny country-pop music while Needtobreathe leaned toward roots rock. But if you headed out to see the Speak Now Tour, before Swift brought out her Broadway style show there were just four dudes with nothing but the instruments they played.

You would think Needtobreathe would be more a fit to tour with fellow Carolinian sibling fronted band The Avett Brothers, but you cannot fault Bear (vocals) and Bo (guitars) for not passing on playing to packed arena across the country all summer even if over half the attendees were teen girls. The Brothers Rinehart are taking the momentum of the tour and putting it behind their fourth studio album The Reckoning
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Though high on passion like The Avett Brothers both on stage and in the studio, Needtobreathe is a more traditional band with traditional instrumentation where banjo are usually used as song accents, not the lead instrument. The Reckoning actually starts out with one of their more adventurous tracks Oohs and Ahhs filled with distortion and the first in a minor key for the group before settling into their more rootsy songs.

Since they do not take as many chances as some of their contemporaries, there is not the high payoff like the recent Mumford & Sons album, Needtobreathe comes closest to them on A Place Only You Can Go but is much sweeter than any songs Marcus Mumford has written so far. Drive All Night gives me a classic Bob Seger vibe. Wanted Man sours with Viva la Vida style vocals that close out the song. While Maybe They Are on to Us may be the most haunting the band has ever been and stands out as one of the better tracks because of it. But the high water mark on the album is Able. The band has bad much of its success on the Christian charts even if their lyrics are not at all overtly religious, but Able is the closest the band has sounded in going to church, but do so in a way that a U2 song does (the title track comes in a close second in this category). But none of the songs really stick out too much like other bands that have taken the Americana flag in recent years and ran with it. But The Reckoning is a good placeholder while waiting on the next Avett Brothers or Mumford and Sons albums to be released.

Song to Download – Able

The Reckoning gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.