Review / Multiple Authors
Rocky Votolato
A Brief History (Reissue)

It is real nice that Rocky Votolato's A Brief History is available again. With the original label - Your Best Guess Records - going the way of the Dodo, this underappreciated gem went out of print. Second Nature, thankfully, has the foresight to make this available for people again, and just in time for the release of Votolato's forthcoming new album, The Brag and Cuss.

"One More Work Song Blues" is a slow, mellow beginning to A Brief History. It has a clean electric guitar tone that excellently accompanies the interesting vocal arrangements while the drums lay a relaxing backbeat. The section where Votolato seems to be wailing away off microphone makes for a great effect. "Silent" drops listeners into an acoustic song. Votolato's laid-back vocals work real well in the confines of this track; they do not come off as pleading or whining just real chill.

"These Old Clothes" pick the pace up for the album a bit. This piece also utilizes a clean electric guitar tone and tasteful drumming. The melody of the song is almost chromatic sounding and lends a strange element to the song. "Temperate" drops the pace a bit but while still maintaining the momentum built up by the previous song. The vocals have a unique rhythmic quality. It almost sounds like they emulate a snare drum marching pattern. The organ in "Plastic Jesus" is awesome; the violin adds even more to the proceedings. The lyrics convey a concrete image in my mind as well. The violin sticks around for the song "In a Cabin" which lends quite a good counterpoint to Votolato's vocals. The guitar playing sounds a bit frantic, which contrasts well with the vocal arrangement. "In a Cabin" sounds like a nice upbeat number. I enjoy the closing track, "Blues Shaker," quite a bit. I like his vocals a great deal here, and I am not quite sure why. It might be the relaxed tone, but that is kind of present throughout the record.

As one of his earlier albums, A Brief History seems to be an apt title for this Rocky Votolato record. It hints at some of the direction he has seen fit to explore on later albums. It also has a raw feel to it that seems to enhance the emotional impact of the body of work that he presents on A Brief History. Serving as a nice teaser for his upcoming album, this reissue of an early Votolato record is more than just a worthy re-addition to his available discography.

A Brief History is Rocky Votolato's second full-length, originally released in 2000 after his hard-to-find self-titled debut in 1999. At twenty minutes long, it's really more of an extended EP, but then, the 'brief' in the title should be taken quite literally.

Newcomers to Votolato's alt-country/Americana sound might be surprised to backtrack through his releases and come across this, helpfully reissued by Second Nature. Opening with the Will Oldham-esque "One More Work Song Blues," we get some faint echoes of Waxwing due to the focus on electric guitar over acoustic. But Votolato's own style comes through recognizably in the more mellow moments like "Silent" and "In a Cabin", the latter of which features some evocative violin. Equally, "Plastic Jesus" is a pleasant cover, livened up midway through by the same jaunty fiddle.

Votolato's later work has tended to show a range of instrumentation, with 2003's Suicide Medicine mainly focusing on solo acoustic songs, but other releases emphasizing a full band aspect. A Brief History has shadows of the urgency in Votolato's later work, but equal measures of the heartfelt and tender ballads present on 2006's Makers.

Fans of Votolato's recent output should take advantage of this reissue and grab the chance to look back on, well, a brief history of the songwriter and his roots. Not quite in any one mood or style and ranging from thoughtful to powerful, there's something for everyone here and it's definitely worth a listen.