FolkWax Review- Bad Nights/Better Days

July 30th, 2008

Review: Bad Nights, Better Days

New School Old School, (07/30/08)

By Arthur Wood, folkwax.com

We reviewed seventeen-year-old Anthony da Costa’s last solo offering, Typical American Tragedy,a few months ago, and hot on the heels of that release comes this thirteen-song duo effort with friend Abbie Gardner, of the roots trio Red Molly. Produced by Fred Gillen Jr and recorded over three days in mid-February at Woody’s House in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, the duo is supported by Emily Price (cello), Steve Kirkman (National guitar, vocals), Oliver Hill (violin), Mark Murphy (double bass), Mark Dann (electric bass), and Gillen (percussion, vocals).

Da Costa penned nine of the Bad Nights/Better Days songs, thirty-three-year-old Gardner composed three, and the pair collaborated on “Someday.” A neat synopsis of the subject matter currently appears on da Costa’s (revamped) website and runs to “Over the course of the record, in the tradition of an old-school concept LP, love is found, confused, lost, rediscovered and redefined.” I could have said it in many more words, but I couldn’t have said it better!

Pretty much from the outset, in addition to the forcefully plucked acoustic guitar, “Spent,” the album opener, features a discernible fuzzed electric guitar. In a similar support role, the instrument appears on the ensuing cut, Gardner’s “Red Barn” (wherein the narrator mourns love that’s taken for granted and confesses a penchant for dancin’ in the moonlight) and nowhere else on this disc. Price’s cello and a gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar perfectly set the mood for “Down On My Knees,” wherein the lovelorn narrator reveals his innermost thoughts while, in support, Gardner’s voice subtly weaves in and out of the mix. On “Someday,” the sole Ab n’ Ant co-write, as if replicating conversation, at least at the outset, they take solos on alternate verses and their voices combine in crescendo on others (including the chorus). Therein the protagonists burned by the intensity of their passion, recall their affair in retrospect and earnestly express the hope that when they next find love “…we’ll stop writing the same songs over and over again.”

The sonically percussive, rhythmically rowdy “Pocket” features the familiar phrase “I am down on my knees.” Where a ghostly banjo is heard as “Pocket” fades, a similar effect (played on violin or cello?) is employed on “Someday.” Gardner’s narrator in the delightful waltz-paced “Crazy In Love,” voices the wish for her man to be more demonstrative with his expressions and professions of love. The protagonists in “Let Me Die In Your Arms” dream of a long and happy future, therefore utterly belying the song title, while Garner’s third contribution, “I’d Rather Be,” is quite a simply a gem wherein the narrator states, plainly, that she’s not going to “…waste my time waiting for love/From a man who’s grown tired of me.” At the outset of “Nothing Left” da Costa paints the portrait of an alcohol-fuelled derelict, who, with “winter creeping in,” dreams of love restored in some verdant green place where “…the clouds aren’t so mean.” Toward the close Gardner delivers the wife’s/lover’s reply “I tried all I could to save him/He would not let go of me, so you see/He could never fall to sleep/My love was not enough.” The track climaxes with Ab n’ Ant’s layered voices – she repeats the (foregoing) reply, while he delivers three lines of the chorus and their voices unite on “My love

was not enough” – following which da Costa, at literally in a deathly whisper, adds the closing “He took the pills she gave/Now there’s one black rose the foot of his grave.”

Confusion and desperation concerning the definition of real love pervades “Better Days,” and the album closes with the optimistic “I Feel Like Dancin’.” In the pantheon of male/female singing duos, past or still present, be they Pop, Folk, Country, or whatever aural concoction, here, da Costa and Gardner more than hold their own, with “I’d Rather Be” and the utterly desperate “Nothing Left” being noteworthy highlights. I guess that

it’s no word of a lie to state that teen da Costa’s songwriting output is prodigious. That said, in terms of album production, maybe the time is right for him to inject new blood into the equation. In that regard, I wonder what Lorne Entress or, for that matter, Sam Kassirer or Zack Hickman of Josh Ritter’s road band would have made of da Costa’s and Gardner’s songs. Hell, I’m even thinking “Come on down to Congress House in Austin.”

Arthur Wood is a founding editor of FolkWax.

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