Bravo Johnson

Great little find! Best way to convince you is listening above but we'll try. This most reminds us the very first Tom Petty & The Hearkbreakers album from 1976, but you'll hear Minibar, Orgone Box, Kings Of Leon in here. The singer sounds like a bastard son of Ronnie Van Zandt singing Blue Ash and early 70's Neil Young songs. It's a most unique, but wholly accessible sound again best listened to above, but man this one is slaying more and more upon each listen. - Bruce Brodeen

The style at heart is folk, but - thanks to the impressive fusion of guitars - the tracks provide enough shades of country and alternative-rock to comfort all types of listeners. If one is looking for more immediate satisfaction, “Hot Wheels” seems like the right route. Featuring yet another Petty-esque chorus that just begs to be sung along to, it seems like a pretty likely choice for a single, especially given the excellent transitional moments where the track shifts into rockabilly before reverting back to the original Americana brew. Alongside the excellent “Are You Dreaming?”, it serves as one of the most accessible tracks on the album. Though the second disc generally pales in comparison to the excellent consistency of the first half, The Crooked and the Straight serves as a very impressive double-album that should most likely usher in Bravo Johnson as one of the breakthrough Americana artists of 2008. - Obscuresound.com

An sepia-tinted image of an army of skulled soldiers is a good way to be introduced to any band. Thoughts of creepy, dark experimental music comes to mind, but Bravo Johnson is not quite that predictable. In actuality, The Crooked and the Straight is a monstrous 27 track double CD of folk and classic rock influenced songs that are polished to a sheen and sound as though they were created by some real professionals. One has to wonder, though, if it’s a bit pretentious for an unknown band to release their sophomore album as a double disc. Does it get tiresome? Slightly. Bravo Johnson obviously has talent but had they kept the best tracks from both discs and tossed the rest, the album would probably be rather amazing.”

Vivian Hua
Editor-in-Chief - Vivian Hua

Hot Wheels by Bravo Johnson
One thing you can say about the band Bravo Johnson is they are capable of making, very, very cool album covers. Skeletons, death, and naked women abound. That aside, the music is a bit psychadelic, with a country influence. Quite rambling. Sometimes it’s refreshing to jump out of the digital arena, and strap on a Hammond Organ and open up the 2″ tape. - Song of the Week - Hot Wheels by Kendall

“Let me clean it up best that I can so that when you return I’ll be a better man.” Put the needle down anywhere on the album and ask your neighbor to name that tune. Sounds like we just tuned into Classic Rock on the radio and these are long-lost songs by some of the best groups of the 60’s & 70’s. In fact, I had to do some checking to be sure this wasn’t a lost “best hits” of some obscure group from middle America that I missed out on. Take a BIG mixing bowl. Add two cups of the Grateful Dead, a cup of The Band, a cup of The Heartbreakers, ½ cup of Dylan, ¼ cup each of Steve Forbert, Rickie Lee Jones, Steely Dan, Santana and Sheryl Crow, and tablespoons full of the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Mix together well and allow to sit in the freezer for 30 years. Take out and bake at 500 degrees with a hot mix of impeccable musicians who keep everything fresh with riffs we remember from the future, deliciously old and never stale. Shoutouts for Ship Of Fools, Cahoots, Hobo, and Losing My Mind - Eartaste.blogspot.com

This is a hearty slice of Americana, that ubiquitous term that means the music draws on folk, rock, blues, R & B, Gospel and country, and these two discs are an all encompassing slice of it. There is a large amount that is not lucid about this group, not that any of it is terribly important in some ways, however there are times that it helps to know some background. The band is lead by Rick Amurrio who handles guitars, piano, Wurlitzer, lead vocals and writes all the songs. That much is revealed in the scanty notes —the title of this double disc (the group's first) isn't on there (found it on the internet—but not much else about the band is exposed to enlighten those that are curious about such details. We do know that the band also includes Hendrik Roever on guitars, Dobro, banjo and steel and that he also recorded, mixed and mastered the disc; Gnossos Pappadopoulis plays bass; and Inaki Garcia is responsible for the drums. That is about the extent of disclosed information which is available on the disc along with the song titles, but not broken down as to which song is on which disc (though they are in sequence).

All that said, or that not said, doesn't effect the approximately two hours of music that is here, and it is well played and proves that it deserves to fit under the title of Americana music. The songs are at times louder and electric and other times they shift to a quieter and more acoustic mode. As to influences perhaps the scope or the reach, is closest to The Band in their eclecticism, maybe at times the later Beatles, and more at other times they tip their hats to Tom Petty. It is an audacious first offering filled with lots of jangly guitars, and for the largest portion of it there is success, and what doesn't quite measure up misses by not much more than a whisker. This is a band that has great potential to show the way to some new directions and lead the pack if they can maintain this form. - Peterborough Folk Music Society

It’s pretty bold for a band—even one whose debts to the long-form jams of the Dead, the Allman Brothers, the Band, the Byrds, Santana, and Skynyrd are practically emblazoned on their guitars and Wurlitzer organs—to release a two hour-long double album as their sophomore album. But Bravo Johnson are intent and unapologetic for taking their time as they plumb the depths of classic rock. They almost drown in those depths, teetering on the cliffs of excess as much as any modern jam band (whose noodling, as a genre, can be either hailed as transcendent or condemned as embarrassingly exorbitant, depending on your patience and affinity for guitar solos). The Crooked and the Straight’s dual title does not refer to a stylistic split between the album’s two discs—the tracks are numbered consecutively through to the end, and the album maintains a consistently jangly aesthetic throughout, challenging the listener to make it through all twenty-seven songs.

What prevents Bravo Johnson from getting mired in all their jangle, despite the album’s extreme length, are the hooks. Lead singer and songwriter Rick Amurrio (whose vocals mostly evoke Tom Petty, except for when he sounds like Ronnie Van Zant) sings over truly catchy guitar licks and harmonies that manage not to get bogged down. The band keeps most of the tunes around the four-minute mark, and is able to keep catchy tracks like “Aimlessly Drifting”, “Losing My Mind”, and “Loveblind” lean enough to prevent the listener from getting bored or overwhelmed. It’s still not an album to sit down with start to finish, but dipping in and out will let a nostalgic listener revisit the heyday of classic rock without either sitting through twenty-minute jams or resorting to the overplayed rock radio standards. - Maura Waltz