Ethan Daniel Davidson "Free the 5" (Times Beach)
By Dave Schutz
Monday. Jun 06, 3:37 AM
The record that could win Nashville… and burn it down.

While Free the 5 (presumably a nod to the West Memphis 3) describes the record’s politics well enough, it plays more like “Get Drunk with the Ethan Daniel Davidson 5.” Davidson starts off gentlemanly enough on “Conquered Beneath a Box-Car Moon.” His sugary croon sounds like the unlikely child of Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang doing its best Graham Parsons impersonation. The same goes for the Stones-y ballad “I Need You Like a House on Fire.” In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone assimilate the sticky worlds of love and politics as slickly as Davidson.

The impression that this record was recorded in order over the course of several bottles of brown stuff starts to show through on “Situationist (Non) National Commercial.” Davidson gets a bit of a growl going and starts getting impolite with John Prine-ish lines like “Forgive you, father, for creating sin.” Next thing you know, they’re kicking into a genuine drinking song. “I Can’t Drink You Pretty” sounds surprisingly chauvinistic, the male voice harping on about the unattractive characteristics of his date, until the woman shoots back with “though I can drink any man under the table, I can’t drink you handsome, wealthy or well-hung.” Touché. The song henceforth rolls joyfully into a honky-tonky celebration of mutual unattraction.

It’s the punked-out (and utterly appropriate) rendition of Prine’s “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore” where the beast really comes out. The guitars hit 11 and Davidson’s croon turns from sugar into dirt. It carries through into the clever “King Coal Made a Mess of My Old Kentucky Home” and the bitter and bouncy “Support the War on Nashville,” which lambasts the inept record industry, proclaiming “we don’t need you around.” At this point, I’m finding it hard to believe I’m listening to the same record I was a half an hour ago. A night that started out at the Grand Ole Opry seems to have ended up at a roadhouse on the outskirts. The band backs off the overdrive on “War All the Time,” but it seems like Davidson is almost mocking himself in the way he takes on the ballad – like the way Mike Patton does lounge – fondly and sarcastically at the same time.

It’s really a tremendous show of force on the part of Davidson (and let’s not forget the band: Jason Charboneau’s guitar playing is especially diverse and expert). He moves through styles and moods as effortlessly and confidently as Prine or Earle or anybody else (probably a natural inclination for a guy born of White Panther parents and raised by Republicans, only to end up a globetrotting troubadour). I’m not familiar with the rest of Davidson’s material to know if this is par for the course, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.
www.ethandanieldavidson.com
www.timesbeachrecords.com

Dave Schutz

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