FEDERAL CHARM – Passengers

Rival Sons released a new single on the same day as the new Federal Charm album Passenger, and one could slip the Sons’ track somewhere in the running order of the full-length and the casual listener might not grok that a cuckoo slipped into federal Charm’s nest. Federal Charm’s sound—and the visceral feel and mood of that sound–so closely resemble the Hard Psychedelia-inflected Blues of Rival Sons, especially with the addition of new vocalist Tom Guyer, that it is almost uncanny. This resemblance might serve as an indictment of a lesser band, but Federal Charm inures themselves against accusations of being a clone or derivative from the simple strength of their songwriting and performances-they start strong with “Swing Sinner” and never really let up.

There’s a great deal of hot emotion expressed through their lyrics; on this album several songs are about love gone wrong and others about the world changing, and not for the better. The restrained fury of the words contrasted with the cool musical stylings gives the music an “Angry Blues” edge that works especially well on songs like “Death Rattle” one of the most interesting new songs you will hear this year. A song about changing urban landscapes, it ends with a minute-long instrumental meditation that moves seamlessly into the equally good “Nowhere Is Home”, the lyrics of which reflect the very rootlessness evoked in the preceding song. The eleven tracks on Passenger are all full of feeling and invention and Federal Charm succeeds purely on their own merits, whatever sonic similarity they may have with their contemporaries and antecedents.

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