2008 Woodie Awards
CD Review: Dustin Kensrue
Please Come Home
Corey Kempf
Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Dustin Kensrue is hardly a newcomer to the realm of rock music. Kensrue already has four full-length albums under his belt as the voice and guitarist of post-hardcore outfit Thrice, whom Kensrue and fellow guitarist Teppei Teranishi have always used as an outlet for their guitar innovation and have always managed to make melodic hardcore sound a little more, well, melodic.
But Kensrue's solo album "Please Come Home" is a far cry from Thrice's heavy sound but no less cutting edge. Where Thrice may fit in best on the road with the Warped Tour, Kensrue could be thrown as an opener for Bruce Springsteen.
For instance, the album's first single, "Pistol," is a slow-paced and heartfelt blues song, touched off by a wailing harmonica. In short, "Pistol" is a love song, but at greater length its lyrics are almost humorously ironic: "You're the girl of my dreams/and a pistol it seems/but you shoot me straight and true."
The rest of the album flows from genre to genre, as each song struggles to find an identity in any given genre but emerges as being successful without a label.
The album's opener, "I Knew You Before," extracts instances of country with its twangy guitar and psychobilly with its up-tempo pace that will sound like someone mashed Johnny Cash and Tiger Army together and this song was the result.
The sound again returns later, although to a lesser extent, in the song "Blood & Wine," a toe-tapping, ingenous offering about choosing sin over purity, as this verse displays: "Oh well I walked to the bank/And I pulled out my gun/You should've seen those people scream and run/I used to make an honest buck/But how can I go back to that again?/Oh, now that I've tasted blood/This wine seems too thin."
The rest of the album will make you swear you've heard each song before, only without that reinventing-the-wheel aftertaste that much of today's pop music leaves behind. Don't be mistaken, nothing has been done this well in years. Kensrue draws images of folk rock, blues and classic rock, displayed best with songs like "I Believe," "Please Come Home" and "Blanket of Ghosts," which reminded me a bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Tuesday's Gone."
Despite the album's brevity, only eight songs, it feels complete by its end, unless you buy the album on iTunes, which inexplicably offers the album with a trio of holiday bonus tracks covered by Dustin, "Please Come Home for Christmas," "Go Tell it On the Mountain" and "Silent Night," apparently included because of the album's near Christmas release.
Whichever way you choose to purchase the album, you won't be disappointed.
But Kensrue's solo album "Please Come Home" is a far cry from Thrice's heavy sound but no less cutting edge. Where Thrice may fit in best on the road with the Warped Tour, Kensrue could be thrown as an opener for Bruce Springsteen.
For instance, the album's first single, "Pistol," is a slow-paced and heartfelt blues song, touched off by a wailing harmonica. In short, "Pistol" is a love song, but at greater length its lyrics are almost humorously ironic: "You're the girl of my dreams/and a pistol it seems/but you shoot me straight and true."
The rest of the album flows from genre to genre, as each song struggles to find an identity in any given genre but emerges as being successful without a label.
The album's opener, "I Knew You Before," extracts instances of country with its twangy guitar and psychobilly with its up-tempo pace that will sound like someone mashed Johnny Cash and Tiger Army together and this song was the result.
The sound again returns later, although to a lesser extent, in the song "Blood & Wine," a toe-tapping, ingenous offering about choosing sin over purity, as this verse displays: "Oh well I walked to the bank/And I pulled out my gun/You should've seen those people scream and run/I used to make an honest buck/But how can I go back to that again?/Oh, now that I've tasted blood/This wine seems too thin."
The rest of the album will make you swear you've heard each song before, only without that reinventing-the-wheel aftertaste that much of today's pop music leaves behind. Don't be mistaken, nothing has been done this well in years. Kensrue draws images of folk rock, blues and classic rock, displayed best with songs like "I Believe," "Please Come Home" and "Blanket of Ghosts," which reminded me a bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Tuesday's Gone."
Despite the album's brevity, only eight songs, it feels complete by its end, unless you buy the album on iTunes, which inexplicably offers the album with a trio of holiday bonus tracks covered by Dustin, "Please Come Home for Christmas," "Go Tell it On the Mountain" and "Silent Night," apparently included because of the album's near Christmas release.
Whichever way you choose to purchase the album, you won't be disappointed.
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