Album Review: Looks Like a Flood, Feels Like a Drought by Preacher’s Sons
By Angel Baker
The Oklahoma native brothers of Preacher’s Sons, Brandon and Jeremy Pfaff, are new on the Americana folk-rock scene but they don’t play like newbies. They play like seasoned professionals, like old bluesmen, like children of a god-man taught to get the kind of strength from the spoken word that only those who’ve been told to be quiet in the pew enough times might. Looks Like a Flood, Feels Like a Drought, the partially fan-funded first release from new Fullerton residents, is a shining example of what a first record should be: it tells us who Preacher’s Sons are; it typifies their sound; and it promises more good things to come (if the first 11 tracks are any inkling).
The record opens with a brief sermon about whiskey and cigarettes, youth and truth – standard, but palliative, fare for good, solid folk music, but Preacher’s Sons add an updated feel to their take on the genre. Think The Fruit Bats meet Ryan Adams and they go for drinks with Tom Petty. Brandon Pfaff’s vocals border perfect and perfectly pained, like an angelic crooning that softens the Midwestern angst and apathy of lyrics like, “At the end of the road, When my seeds have all been sewn and my love’s been spent, My money all gone with nothin’ but a song, I close my eyes and finally lay down and die,” on “Lay Down and Die” and, “Gotta die before you grow; Sometimes the earth is so cold I’m not sure the sun is there at all,” on the album namesake, “Looks Like a Flood.”
A steady theme of death, feeding the earth, and more death, Preacher’s Sons’ first record is saved from sending us into total despair by the brothers’ innocent, almost matter of fact, acceptance of this circle of life motif. The dichotomy of the upbeat campfire musings and the darkness of their lyrics is a welcomed endeavor and evidences the musicians’ song-writing craftsmanship. Plenty of acoustic picking and solitary sounding prose, Looks Like a Flood, Feels Like a Drought has everything we want from a band – recognizable sentiments, some sing-out-loud choruses, and some cry-in-the dark lyrics. Better still, Preacher’s Sons, and their impressively polished presentation, have all the authenticity of the gray haired old-timers in their niche so we can bum a ride on this train and not feel like we’re buying a lie.
Be among the first to stake your claim on this great addition to Americana and check out Preacher’s Sons now.
Looks Like a Flood, Feels Like a Drought is available on the band’s website for $8.00 and on itunes for $9.99.
Rating: 8/10
Tracklist:
- Space and Time
- Antidote
- Poison Oak
- Drowning
- Then It All Went Wrong
- Looks Like a Flood
- Worm Food
- Wandering
- Lay Down and Die
- Free
- Feels Like a Drought
