Tin Horn Prayer, “Get Busy Dying” LP

cover-tin-horn-prayerTin Horn Prayer
Get Busy Dying
(Bermuda Mohawk Productions)

If Tin Horn Prayer‘s Get Busy Dying was nothing but a one-sided single containing only the song “Crime Scene Cleanup Team,” it would still be worth purchasing. With the opening line, “Crime Scene Cleanup Team – I’m sorry for the mess I’m gonna make,” as well as the grimly picturesque “The first thing that you’ll notice as you waner down the halls / Is that red Picasso painting that I painted on the walls,” it’s an eerily jaunty murder ballad from the portrait of a suicide. It’s a modern-day update of the “bank come to take your house” tale that’s been told ever since there was a bank to take your house.

The rest of the album is the first country punk / folk punk record I’ve heard in a good long while that actually manages to not sound inauthentic. Far too many of this genre’s stripe aim for some sort of backcountry roots, but more often than not end up sounding like Dylan ripoff artists. Get Busy Dying sounds like Tin Horn Prayer is a band that likes punk rock and alt country. Much like Split Lip Rayfield sounds like bluegrass played by farm kids who listened to Bill Monroe and Slayer, Tin Horn Prayer is city kids who liked the Pogues and Hot Water Music.

Get Busy Dying‘s only misstep comes at the end, when Tin Horn Prayer covers the traditional ballad, “Wayfaring Stranger.” I admire the band’s attempt to connect with the roots of the roots sound they’re playing, but it just comes off as a weak and poorly-paced. You think it’s going to ramp up and do something new, but it’s a rote rendition that offers nothing to recommend it.

This LP comes after last year’s limited CD release, and is on heavy-duty black vinyl, with a very nice cover that’s clear gloss on matte black. Very artsy, in that you’ve got to get the light shining on the jacket to see anything.