Memphis-born Drew Holcomb came to music with a heated urgency at age seventeen, spurned by the sudden death of his younger brother and searching for a painkiller that would help him make sense of such emotionally complex events. Then, and as he went through college in Knoxville, he became hooked on the sounds and words of songwriters as musically diverse as he himself seems to be so many years on. You could call it Americana, you could call it folk, you could call it rock, or just music that says something. That’s where Drew found solace, happiness and meaning as a young man and still today, and that’s the path he takes us down on new record ‘Medicine’, recorded as usual with his band The Neighbors.
An ambitious project from a lyrical standpoint, it aims to be the very medicine that Drew found in the music of his youth, covering the stories of himself, friends and fans in a rough-and-ready style that nonetheless leaves bare the poetic and meaningful turns of phrase. It’s of utmost importance, therefore, that the lyrics be on display for listeners to pour over in that kind of fan connection that can only be achieved when music is true. Inside the album booklet each of the twelve tracks is laid out in its entirety (surprisingly rarer than you think these days), each a piece of valid prose in its own right. The fact that these poems actually take the form of songs only brings them more alive, lifting them off the page like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that breathes full, nutritional air into something that was previously was only an idea of what could be.
In other words, the songs on ‘Medicine’ live as poetry, but more than that. If music is to achieve longevity, it must survive so many listens that it is able to carry us through years of ups and downs, each time taking a new shape when our new experiences inform our listening. Drew’s gravelly and sometimes biting vocals utter the lyrics through a filter of a life well-lived, with stories the painted pictures of a collective history. From the eternal love song to his wife, ‘You’ll Always Be My Girl’, inspired by a bedtime play with his daughter, to the feisty ‘Shine Like Lightning’, that chronicles the band’s determination to succeed as an independent act, to the romantic ‘American Beauty’, a mystified memory of a love long lost, this is a complete record in so much as a record can ever be complete. Chapters, all interlinked, and yet also separate. Snapshots of life.
Taking a simple, honest approach to recording, the band got together for a string of studio sessions that were done fairly quickly. At times, they would just learn the song Drew had written (he wrote every track entirely himself save for ‘Avalanche’, which was co-written with band member Ian Fitchuk), then fall into the arrangement where things felt right and record as is. ‘You’ll Always Be My Girl’ was done in one take, and was on tape as it appears on the record less than 24 hours after it had begun to be written. Sometimes music is just better if it’s simple and you let the heart of the song breathe, the accompaniment just a support system that never takes the lead. Even the more upbeat songs like ‘Here We Go’ still doesn’t use a particularly complex mix, and it is all the better for it.
In short, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors’ album ‘Medicine’ is one that you will enjoy, regardless of your musical preferences. Some things are universal, and shared emotional experience can cross any barrier, even time.
