Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir - Ten Thousand [Album]

Balling The Jack Records

November 26, 2009, 12:25 PM

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by Hannah Edney [More from this Author]

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Get those banjos out! Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir (yup, that’s their real chosen name) are a four-piece roots blues outfit from Calgary that prefer their music as rootsy and bluesy as possible. Their way of putting it is: “We play music based on pre-WWII blues and mountain music though we've got our own weird, displaced take on it.”

I have to say though, and bear in mind this is coming from someone whose knowledge of traditional mountain blues is somewhat basic, I’m having trouble pinpointing the band’s “own” take on it. There are some imaginatively arranged instruments, and lead vocalist Bob Keelaghan’s voice doesn’t sound quite like an old bluesman’s would have, but sadly something tells me that’s more because his vocals aren’t as good, not because he’s putting a “displaced take on it.”

They sound like a band that are simply harking back to the good ol’ days, when music was full of good stories and was central to passing on knowledge from one generation to the next. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that, as long as you either update the sound, or copy it unbelievably well; this album doesn’t entirely succeed at either.

There are three covers from American folk / blues legends featured in total, one from the man whose face adorns the album cover, Eddie “Son” House. This song, ‘Empire State Express,’ and indeed the remaining two cover-versions of Dewey Balfa and Sleepy John Estes' songs only serve to show how good the original artists were, which surely isn’t the aim of a cover version? Perhaps Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir just selflessly want to raise the profile of blues champions. This would seem to be the case if the album sleeve design is anything to go by; it features Son House on what looks like a strange bank note. After a closer look (and a bit of research on Wikipedia), it emerges that this is a version of a hell note, a kind of fake money burned at the graves in China to ensure a wealth of good things for a spirit in the afterlife. They usually feature an obscene amount of money (hence the album title ‘Ten Thousand’) and novelty versions can feature deceased legends like Marilyn Monroe or Elvis. So Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir clearly want to show their appreciation for blues legends (and perhaps disregard for the seriousness of Chinese superstitions).

I think mostly it’s about proving that the old blues songs are still relevant; there’s a feeling that blues music was "of its time" and, even though it clearly was and is inseparable from a certain point in history, its messages still stand, from skirt chasing to crime and downtrodden underdogs. The chorus lyrics to the track from which the album title is taken, ‘10,000 Years,’ are “I’ve been here 10,000 years and I’ll be here 10,000 more.” It’s all about inheritance, baby.

People who are unfamiliar with roots blues would first compare them to Seasick Steve, and indeed Uncle Steve is thanked in the album sleeve, and is unsurprisingly one of the band’s "top friends" on Myspace. But why Seasick Steve has been so successful is because he’s updated the sound for new generations, and he doesn’t sound like Bruce Springsteen trying to be authentic (sorry Bruce). The White Stripes have also covered Son House, something which succeeds in bringing roots music to the attention of the average NME punter, but Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir seem to be mainly about keeping it way back when.

A good thing about "Ten Thousand" is that, as an album, it’s well put together. Most tracks are short little blasts of hillbilly blues, and the mood is nicely mixed up to keep the album bouncing along nicely - there’s no dull self-indulgent instrumentals.

So it’s not bad, but they’re not doing their own thing. It’s quite refreshing that they’re just making music in what isn’t a mainstream genre, but they’re not stamping it enough with their own crest. As they say themselves in the track ‘Dumb It Down’: “It’s mediocrity, not creativity, that sucks out all the flavour so there’s nothing left to savour.” So why aren’t they being more creative? Well, they are self-confessed agnostics I guess.