Pneumonia

It’s not only the bubblegum acts that get hyped. Whiskeytown, in their day, were beneficiaries of some pretty misplaced praise, most of it from Uncut, a fine publication hamstrung by a tendency to roll over for anything in a cowboy hat.

If the band’s debut and Stranger’s Almanac were solid efforts that could barely withstand the Replacements-meets-Gram Parsons claims being made on their behalf, then this is a tombstone, a posthumous collection culled from a double album’s worth of tracks from the vaults.

Ryan Adams, now a solo act, hits the mark once every three or four tunes, such as on the Band pastiche ‘Ballad Of Carol Lynn’, with its Levon Helm gargle and clubhouse shuffle. ‘Sit And Listen To The Rain’ also scores high – a down-mouthed blues boasting Kurt-like “dumb/numb” rhymes. This is the good stuff. Elsewhere the band can sound like a sub-par Jayhawks or JC Mellencamp (‘Crazy About You’) or worse, on dull acoustic ballads such as ‘Under Your Breath’, a boot-cut Dan Fogelberg. Don’t believe the tripe: this is a bunch of average songs struggling to do better.