Wild Sweet Orange
We Have Cause
To Be Uneasy
Canvasback
By Mike Randall
It seems that whenever a band comes from the southeastern United States, it’s imperative to point it out whether or not it’s relevant. In the case of Birmingham’s Wild Sweet Orange, it is and it isn’t. For the sake of content, their debut We Have Cause To Be Uneasy is a battle cry to get out of Alabama, to leave behind broken homes and broken hearts. Aptly named frontman Preston Lovinggood is as honest as they come, translating suburban angst that exists in Anytown, USA, but instilling an unmistakable dose of southern comfort by toeing the blurry line of alt-country with dirt-road atmospherics and down-home charm.
Coming across like the American equivalent of British group South, Wild Sweet Orange find their roots in folk but add elements of the music that surrounds them. Whereas South tend to lean more on electronic supplements, Wild Sweet Orange at times stress more alternative rock and at times more country, and occasionally both. They seem to not want to lean too far in either direction, and it works for the most part; that is the further away they get from Coldplay or even My Chemical Romance.
At its strongest, Wild Sweet Orange is a roots band at the core. The swaying early-morning serenity of “Ten Dead Dogs” is classic country-tinged folk, with Lovinggod revealing, “For a brief moment I heard the whole earth groaning like there was something it needed me to do.” The band recalls some of M. Ward’s finer moments during the classic piano-banjo-guitar of “An Atlas to Follow,” as Lovinggood laments, “In this old money town it’s easy to get stuck.” Ward once again comes to mind during the solo-strummed “Night Terrors,” a stirring duet packed with lyrical imagery and some of Lovinggood’s best writing (It doesn’t get any better than “Washes his feet with the tears from his face”).
Although musically Wild Sweet Orange is a tight unit of steady players, Lovinggood’s voice is the band’s greatest asset, as he can take it anywhere from a whisper to a howl to an operatic carbon copy of Bono. He’s at his most blunt during “Sour Milk,” a Decemberist-style funeral march that finds him full of remorse for his mom, who sleeps alone as his dad fills his bed with “whores.” On tracks like “House of Regret,” a heart-on-sleeve rocker that includes traces of Wilco keyboard experimentation, you can almost feel his teeth grit together and muscles tighten in his arms when he sings “I have a friend and when he sings I cry…I can’t talk to old times tonight.” Still, it’s when he sings of getting out of town above Edge-like guitar textures on “Crickets” or dishing out advice about the pain that will follow running away during “Land of No Return” that you picture yourself a bystander on a country front porch, listening to arguments inside the house while the warm air churns around you.
“I’m as dramatic as the thunder,” Lovinggod sings during the epic sonic blast of “Aretha’s Gold.” That might be true, but he and his band treat the songs of We Have Cause like they’re salvation, as if their ticket out of town lies within the grooves of their record. Although they might be planning an escape, or perhaps it’s just a case of the overdramatic, there’s something stirring in Alabama, and it’s more than just a storm. Do they have cause to be uneasy? It’s likely. For the listener, however, it’s a good cause.
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