Anyone who hasn’t had their classic American songwriting cravings sated by Ryan Adams’ recent album release, may care to swing their ears briefly in the direction of a new kid on the alt-country block. You might not immediately associate the name of Brooklyn resident and songwriter Israel Nash Gripka with rootsy, countrified rock’n'roll music, but the singer has produced a sophomore album so loaded with American rock touchstones that it might as well have been called “A Grand Lexicon of Americana” as “Barn Doors and Concrete Floors”.
The key to Gripka’s appeal is twofold. A little like Caitlin Rose, he has written an album full of familiar sounding songs, rooted not just in trad country but also in the more pop-rock leanings of various ’70s and ’80s American icons. Where Caitlin Rose channelled the spirit of Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks into her songs, Gripka infuses his boisterous debut with shades of that iconic generation of oh-so-American songwriters Steve Earle, Tom Petty, Bob Seger and John Mellencamp (when he still had Cougar as a middle name, naturally).
While the album has country at its soul, its physical presence is pure rock’n'roll. Sure, the album (recorded deep in the Catskills in a shed-cum-studio) captures some of Gripka’s big sound (Mellencamp sounding album opener “Fool’s Gold” is a pretty good indication), the singer really excels live, his big voice and bigger sound taking the fairly simple songs to another level. His recent Brighton show at the Green Door Store pretty much summed up the man, a life-affirming set of carousing songs, played mighty loud to a crowd who couldn’t wipe the grins off their faces.
The album successfully sashays from the Ryan Adams-esque “Goodbye Ghost” to the big-rockin’ gang vocal chorus of “Four Winds” and on to “Louisiana” which comes on like the Band’s “The Weight” turned up to 12. Nothing about Gripka’s lyrics is going to change your life, mounting up to a classic selection of endearingly cliched couplets (being a Southern preacher’s son obviously ain’t what it used to be), but worrying about that is the worst kind of irrelevance. This is straight up old school rock designed not to make you coo at the wordplay but to make you stomp your feet and sing along. You can always play “John Wesley Harding” tomorrow, after all.
Like much of the recent pop-country-rock music to emerge from the States, Gripka seems almost perversely suited to early success over here as much as back home. If you get a chance to see the man play live, grab it with both mitts, he’s guaranteed to blow the cobwebs away and send you into retro yankee-rock revelry.
“Barn Doors and Concrete Floors” is out now.
Israel’s website is here.
