The Midget, the Speck and the Molecule

The long awaited return rewards

     

The Swirling Eddies intitally was a sidestep made by the band Daniel Amos, a place where the broader and more comedic aspects of the group had free reign as DA proper grew more angular. Somewhere along the line (right about the recording of Zoom Daddy) the lines were blurred. Lyricist and lead singer Terry Taylor brought an unguarded forthrightness to the Zoom Daddy tracks previously reserved for DA recordings.

It's been a long time since new Eddies material arrived and, in the intervening years, The Lost Dogs has become Taylor's primary gig. It is then no surprise that new Eddies appear on The Midget, The Speck and The Molecule and bear quick resemblance to the Dogs' Mike Roe, Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong. It all works for the best as Midget sounds like the natural heir to Zoom Daddy's throne, and not like an electrified Dogs disc (although that isn't a half-bad idea.)

The opening track, "It All Depends" is a study in perspective, the fine line that separates freedom from enslavement, victory from failure and that fine line is merely the perspective from which you choose to view the circumstances. The second track, the album's title cut, begs the listener for compassion and mercy in the immediate, doing so in the form of a hitchhiker that becomes more and more diminished by distance, until he's almost non-existent - almost, but not quite. The melody of the song is reprised as a coda for the final track "This Is The Title".

In between are songs that rock pretty hard for a band that has been exploring Americana textures for awhile. Sometimes the lyrics are controversial, sometimes they're a little twisted, but the entirety of the album is consistently entertaining and, yes, these Eddies still know how to stomp the distortion pedal. We're better off for it.

The album is recommended for everyone who has followed The Swirling Eddies, The Lost Dogs and the myriad bands that are adjacent to them.