The Crippled Dog Band

Album Review

Given the longtime obscurity that Bobb Trimble's first two albums had been lost in, it was almost surprising to realize that the story had its own even more obscure sequel, the documentation of when Trimble joined a band in 1983. Partially made of veterans from the Kidds, the youthful bunch that had backed him up on some Harvest of Dreams tracks, the Crippled Dog Band proved to be a nicely raucous counterpoint to the extreme delicacy that Trimble had already made his own. Their one, extremely limited-edition album, partially anthologized on Life Beyond the Doghouse in 2002 and then fully re-released in 2011, found Trimble and company delivering a generally quicker, shuddering energy than his previous releases had shown, yet at the same time, it's impossible to miss how it's still Trimble through and through, thanks to his unique, sweet, and strange voice, as well as his constantly flanged, almost pulsing guitar. Songs like "Camel Song" and "Fight or Fall" are perfect representatives of this kind of energy, sometimes big, clattering, and loud, sometimes feeling like a perfect garage/folk nugget from the '60s dropkicked into a much different time (something the video game noises that start and end the record help to reconfirm). Then there's "All Together Now," embodying Trimble's endless love for the Beatles but also rewritten into an anthem for the Crippled Dog Band itself. Two songs familiar from other releases took on slightly different forms here — Harvest of Dreams' "Armor of the Shroud" has a somewhat more roughed-up feeling here, though it's still the longest and most mysterious track on the later release, while "Galilean Boy," having later surfaced as a live bonus on Harvest's CD release, appeared in studio form here first.