Mike West’s fourth album offers a relatively unusual mixture of bluegrass, New Orleans jazz and blues, Celtic jigs and string-band romps using seven musicians and fifteen instruments. He pulls off all that variety with a reasonable sense of cohesiveness, but the end result is less than compelling.
West, a native Australian raised in England, received some notoriety in the ’80s playing in the post-punk Man From Delmonte. In 1993, he ached to “kick back on the porch and play some banjo,” so he moved to New Orleans and bought one. He’s been touring with his wife, Myshkin, as a duo ever since, recording albums with various backing musicians. Race That Train features Sneaky Pete on bass, Monty Montgomery on tuba and percussion (including spoons, doumbek and conga), Gina Forsyth on fiddle, Slim Nelson on harmonica and Marc “Stone” Steinberg on National Steel. Myshkin sings both lead and harmonies, playing mandolin, guitars and washboard, while West is featured on vocals, banjo, mandolin and guitar.
The songs are liberally littered with humorous quips, and although most sound as if they came from long ago, their up-to-the-minute insights reveal their modernity. Standouts include “If I Had A Car”, a what-if lament that spirals toward the ridiculous, much to the narrator’s chagrin; and “Neighborhood,” which opens with a traditional bluegrass banjo run and ends with a man pleading for his honey to sit out on the porch with him and “Lean against my arm and enjoy this calm/And the lonely sound of the car alarm.”
But the standouts don’t outnumber the fillers, such as the title track, a predictable instrumental banjo-and-harmonica race to the finish. And the duo’s vocals, while well-suited for the novelty songs, don’t ever lose their humorous edge enough to be taken seriously. In the end, it’s hard to keep interested in the jokesters once you’ve already heard their punchlines.