Funky Nashville

Review from www.inmyheadphones.blogspot.com, www.72hrsonline.com

Much like in Canada, where it seems great music is around every corner, something must have gotten out into the water in Denmark. A few months ago I reviewed a band called 2nd Street, and in the process I was contacted about Funky Nashville, a band Iceberg Records was hoping to be able to market to an American audience. I liked what I heard. The band’s music, a blend of surf-rock, pop, country and jump blues, is like nothing I’ve ever heard in this country, despite the fact that Funky Nashville draws from a number of signifi cant American musical developments over the last fifty years. Particularly the country and surf-rock blend made me think radio might be intrigued by their prospects - especially now that country music has been making consistent inroads into the pop market.
What I didn’t expect when I first heard the band in the fall of 2005 was for them to craft an album that would become such a favorite. But this three-man band from Copenhagen has an inate ability to develop a hook. Each of the eleven tracks on Hitch A Ride are infectious and hip, awash with steel guitar (used as a bass element, no less!) and the staccato rhythm of mexican-styled trumpets, while vocalist / guitarist Sverre Stein Nielsen takes it all to the next level with his gravelly-yet-smooth blues vocals.
Think Johnny Cash meets U2 in a bar with Cake-frontman John McCrea during a fourday bender and you might have a slight inkling of the potential this band posesses. “Hitch A Ride,” the first track (and lead-off single) from the album is a toe-tappingly addictive alt-country number with a killer hook; a non-traditional murder ballad involving a male hitchhiker taken hostage by a femme fatale driver, has the potential to take college rock and top-forty radio by storm, if only stations will be willing to take the chance. From there, the album is chock-full of single material. From the merengetinged “Mexican Stars” to “Ain’t No Cowboy” -- something of a reworking of the likes of Dave Loggins’ “Please Come To Boston,” all would make solid additions to traditionally tepid summer playlists. In that particular song, the main character is pursued by a woman who wants him to return to town and settle down, but (unlike Loggins’ protagonist) he chooses to dump her rather than give up the cowboy life. “I wish
that you were homeward bound,” she says, mournfully. He responds: “Baby, please don’t worry; I’m sure you’ll fi nd another man.” Now that’s cold!
The key, however, is that while crafting a series of solid singles, the band has built an album from the bottom up that tells the traditional cowboy story, updated to a modern setting and blending genres in a way that hasn’t been done to my knowledge. It’s a brilliant effort, one that deserves to break through into the American radio market in a big way. To overlook Hitch A Ride would be a massive mistake. Here’s hoping this won’t be the best album of 2006 no one hears. - www.72hrsonline.com, by Jonathan Sanders

By Matt Rowe

From the opening notes of “Hitch a Ride” you can tell that you’re in for some good music. With a blend of down south Texas twangy guitar and Mexican horns, good songwriting and some dark elements, ‘80s style ( a bit like Depeche Mode), the song begins Hitch a Ride from Denmark’s Funky Nashville. Yeah…funky, I know. But these guys have tapped into that bit of magic that makes music so much fun to discover and listen to.
The album moves into the second track, “Gone Away” with a “Peter Gunn” guitar sound running through along with a splash of good old harmonica. “Mexican Stars” adds the Morricone whistle that might have you looking for Clint Eastwood steeping away from the side of a building, evaluating you with the questioning eyes.
The Texan twang of the guitars run through all of the songs found on Hitch a Ride. And while there might be a sense of sameness threading through the album, it is a different take on musical styles and blends (you have to love that Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” guitar found at the centre of “Ain’t No Cowboy.”)
The album provides 11 tracks with 3 bonus tracks included. One of the bonus tracks is an excellent remix of “The Witch Queen of New Orleans,” half Roy Orbison and half CS&N (“Woodstock,”) with the familiar TexMex Morricone whistle in it. Despite a concentrated fascination with southern US culture (Texas into Mexico) circa ‘60s musically, Funky Nashville have taken that culture and created an alternative (why do I hate that term?) to today’s alternative sound. - www.musictap.net

By Jason Mackey

When most people think about popular music in Europe, they immediately think of techno. The continent seemingly has an uncanny ability to remix our favorite, and sometimes forgotten, ‘80s songs into creations that are possibly better than their originals. The three members of Funky Nashville, who are Denmark natives, also take their cues from American music. But instead of simply remixing a song, Funky Nashville takes the distinctive elements of American country western and combines them
with modern rhythms and accompaniment, upbeat tempos and strong bass lines. The result is a distinctive musical style that is fresh and exciting.
Funky Nashville excels at creating poppy country/new wave hybrid singles with catchy choruses and echoing background vocals. Memorable tunes are developed through layers of sound that are placed perfectly and never clumsily stacked. The introspective title track “Hitch A Ride” and the poppy anthem “My Corazon” have the ability to make listeners join in singing, but more importantly leave them satisfied with the musical experience. “Love” blends three vocal layers with the lead proclaiming “Love is the answer so they say.” “Eerie Old Town” uses production techniques to create echoes and
distortion that adds to the already existing variety present on this disc.
The one track that sums up the sound of Funky Nashville is also the highlight of the album, the instrumental “El Paso Bound.” Playing like the a song from the sound track of a Quentin Tarantino movie, the track successfully conveys what Funky Nashville is all about; mixing the classic sounds of western music with modern vocals, harmonies, rhythms and grooves. Throughout the album the group uses classic country elements such as the slide guitar, mouth harp, horns, whistles and harmonicas. “El Paso Bound” is no different and many of these quirky musical stereotypes are put to full use, but in
a way that sounds natural.
In today’s music scene it’s hard to find a unique sound that is also full of talent. Funky
Nashville has both going for them. Hitch A Ride is full of tightly wrapped numbers that
are perfect for spicing up your CD library. - www.rwsmagazine.com

By Emil

Somewhere in my mind there exists a hypothetical movie assembled from bits and pieces of every Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Sergio Leone flick I’ve seen on cable television. In it, Benicio Del Toro plays a hit man who’s driving through a rattlesnake-infested desert, on the run from an insane Texas Ranger played by Christopher Walken. The movie starts out really cool, with shots of sun-bleached wasteland, a tense gunfight in a run-down motel, and Benicio spouting some bad-ass one-liners. Eventually, the whole thing goes a bit overboard, particularly in the final scene where, having been pumped full of lead by a SWAT team, Benicio chugs an entire bottle of tequila and it comes trickling out the bullet holes in his gut.
Funky Nashville’s “Hitch A Ride” would make the perfect soundtrack for that movie. It starts with a menacing gunslinger vibe, twanged-out guitars chiming like church bells as mariachi trumpets set the stage for a shootout. On both the ballads and the rockers, Funky Nashville play everything for maximum cinematic effect, adorning the arrangements with choirs of background vocals, horns, strings, percussion, and tons of reverb. Now and again a hip-hop loop or static-y industrial sound effect reminds you that this is the 21st century, but otherwise the songs exist in a timeless netherworld
of phantom truckers, lost highways, and ruthless banditos – a version of the American West that only existed in paperback novels and Hollywood movies.
When not strumming flamenco riffs on his acoustic, vocalist/guitarist Sverre Stein Nielsen sings about “gambling my life away” and “sweet love… under the Mexican Stars” in a voice somewhere between Dwight Yoakam’s drawl and Morrissey’s melancholy croon. Yes, it’s all a bunch of Spaghetti Western clichés, but Funky Nashville are so dead-on in their delivery that you can’t help but get swept along.
Like any good direct-to-DVD B-movie, “Hitch A Ride” comes packaged with a few deleted scenes that were better left deleted. Of the three bonus tracks tacked onto the end of the album, only “Searching for Love” works, and probably because it’s in the same Spaghetti Western style as the album tracks. As for the others… Nielsen’s attempt at a Big & Rich-style honky-tonk rap on “Everything We Do” falls flat, while the gumbo-flavored disco-funk of “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” just proves that only Dr. John can sing songs about voodoo ladies without sounding ridiculous. Bonus tracks aside, for a bunch of guys from Denmark, Funky Nashville do an impressive job of channeling the spirit of the American West – or at least of the American West as it’s depicted in pop culture. While it’s probably not going to fit in with either mainstream country radio or the alt-country scene, “Hitch A Ride” is probably one of the ten best country records I’ve heard this year. Now, if only Benicio Del Toro could make a movie to go along with it... - www.pluginmusic.com