The Paladins – Million Mile Club
Usually the business of making music is as tedious as trade talk anywhere. Mostly it boils down to this: The bigger the label, the more money can be spent recording and promoting the music, and the faster you can get dropped if it doesn’t sell.
Still, whoever consummated this marriage between the Paladins, a scorching blue-billy trio from San Diego, and 4AD, the stylish English label famous for the Cocteau Twins, Lush, the Pixies, etc., should never be entrusted with the breeding of barnyard animals. Yeah, 4AD also put out the last Tarnation record, but at least you could make some kind of case that Paula Frazer’s voice fit that ethereal sound the label’s famous for.
Or put more simply, the Paladins play working-class bar music. This they do spectacularly well on a good night, and the live Million Mile Club captures a pretty fair night. This device also allows them to reprise songs from previous releases and labels (including their self-titled debut on the long-defunct Wrestler label), yielding a fair and honest greatest hits package.
The Paladins’ charms are marvelously straightforward. Dave Gonzales is a sparkling guitar stylist: Call it blues, rockabilly, swamp, whatever, he’s got a beautiful tone reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan (which means they were both stealing it from the same places), and a nicely understated sense of exactly when to attack a riff and for how long. Usually. Gonzales also has a rough ‘n’ ready voice, and is a pretty fair songwriter in a subgenre filled with second-raters.
And yet those strengths have been a curious limitation on record. The Paladins have always featured gifted standup bass players, but I’ve yet to hear a record on which the low end was adequately represented. Million Mile Club is no different, but by now I’ve gotten the message that it’s Gonzales’ band and enjoy the ride.
So it’s a live record from one of the best bar bands this side of Texas. The sound’s not really an issue (you only notice the audience during the odd break), and the trio’s still in fine shape. They’ve left off some favorites, such as “Lover’s Rock” and “Daddy Yar”, and live solos inevitably run a few bars longer than they would in the studio, but Million Mile Club is still a fair summation of the road taken so far.
And I’d love to hear the Bottle Rockets have a go at “15 Days Under the Hood”.