Drew Danburry, This Could Mean Trouble, You Don’t Speak for the Club

review by dave heaton

A few weeks back I watched the Werner Herzog documentary Encounters at the End of the World. The people he encounters in Antarctica are all a little out of step with mainstream society and seekers, searching for something. Alaska isn’t Antarctica, but I think of that notion when I listen to Drew Danburry sing of Alaska as a force drawing him in, at the beginning and end of his latest album. It’s not just a hymn to the place, it’s a conversation with it, “Oh my sweet Alaska, will you set me free?”

Yes across his albums Danburry too is a seeker, of answers, truths, feelings, people and places. And one concerned with the ways individuals find themselves at odds with societal forces, as the album title indicates. Across the album, he expresses himself through ruminant folk-pop – with tinges of angst, a troubadour’s dusty-harmonica style, or the atmosphere of old-time saloon music, as on “Execute” (full title “People Like Me Should Be Executed Like in the Iron Maiden or Something Medieval” – when it comes to titles he doesn’t play around). Or through pure pop melodies, like those set to ukulele on “I’m Pretty Sure” (“I’m Pretty Sure This Is Someone Else’s Song, But I Couldn’t Figure Out Whose So I’m Keeping It”), a song with a nautical theme about searching for hope. Or by telling stories in song, or expressing his anger/worry about the world. “Memorial Day” does both. It’s an anti-Iraq war outburst that becomes a story as it proceeds, as we realize it’s a birthday message from a soldier to his mom.

The album balances hope and worry. There are songs of encouragement to families and friends, and songs that cry for the ways we stumble through our lives. “Billboards” finds him muddling through memories of youth, contemplating the way we grow or not. On “Execute”, Danburry takes regret for mistakes and turns it into a search for improvement. During “Life Security”, a sad song filled with loss, he struggles with one person’s position in it all: “I don’t think I’m strong enough to hold everyone up with just my ego.”

All of these riveting and tuneful explorations of the emotional cycles of life come to a climax in “L’ecole”, probably the most didactic song but also one of the best. Each verse tells a story of a person. Each is a lesson in living, in finding value in life. Each is an argument against apathy, for going with the flow. The last character seems a stand-in for Danburry himself, or at least an ideal, what he is aspiring to do with his music. That’s to have fun, sing his songs, and use what he knows and doesn’t know to help people figure out their own lives. Call him an indie-pop/folk self-help guru, then, but one who knows there aren’t any easy answers in life.

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