The Smoking Flowers' Snowball Out of Hell

My latest Vinyl Anachronist music review, for The Smoking Flowers' Snowball Out of Hell, is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. You can read it here.

The Smoking Flowers' Let's Die Together

"Well, I don't think that title's nice. It's not nice at all. Nope, I don't like it one bit!"

It's hard to believe it's been more than five years since I reviewed The Smoking Flowers' 2 Guns right here. I really liked that one, the way this married duo reminded me of an even more road-weary Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, a country pair absolutely able to pour on the heavy rock and roll in an utterly convincing way. One of the most interesting things about Scott and Kim Collins is that they're not kids. They've been singing together for twenty years, and there's that incredible feeling of having been through so much together, a feeling that saturates every note. As I mentioned in my review of 2 Guns, Kim had just recently won her battle against breast cancer, and that album was a celebration of that victory. That means a lot more to me now than it did five years ago--my significant other just won the same battle last year--and this album is even more impressive in the way it proudly declares that they're still here, and they're kicking more ass than ever before.

Compared to the 2013 album, Let's Die Together sounds much more accomplished. Instead of being just a talented singer-songwriter duo, they're now something more--true artists who have a confident sound and attitude that comes from years and years of putting everything into their music, flesh and blood and a river of tears that carries it all downstream. The album starts off with a couple of face-peeling rockers, "Young & Brave" and "Rip It Off," full of anthemic riffs and angry, defiant lyrics. These are the songs you might hear at a club, one where you can get relatively close to the stage and know there's simply no way this is going to be a disappointing night. After that you get "Here 4 U Now," the kind of big and sweeping rock epic that Springsteen used to sing back when I gave a damn. (Stop groaning. You know what I mean.) Then an interesting thing happens, something fairly standard among talented musicians setting out to make an excellent album--they mix it up and slow it down.

This is where the country side comes out, the Gram and Emmylou feel, the great songwriting about the uncommon experiences of a couple who has been on the road for decades and has come out the other side with an even stronger sense of dedication. This is also where Scott gets to show off his guitar chops, where style replaces volume. He feels comfortable in so many styles, bluesy when he needs to be and sweet and lyrical in the more acoustic moments. It's easy to get lost in Kim's big and bold voice, and it's also easy to love the way the two harmonize. But Scott's a hell of a guitarist, and it's time I said so.

That title. Let's Die Together. I love it. Despite the ominous image on the cover of a submerged woman and an accordion floating to the bottom of some body of water, it's obvious what it means. After everything they've been through, it's obvious that they'll survive as long as they're standing side by side. They've walked the walk. The quote above refers to people who take things literally and are easily offended by nonsense--in this case it reminds me of an old girlfriend who, in retrospect, was far too Jesus-y for me. I was trying to make her cooler than she was by introducing her to Wilco, a favorite at the time (and still is). She heard the lyrics "I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt alright to me" from "Via Chicago" and was immediately convinced that she was listening to something evil and satanic. It started to explain the different layers of meaning and how Jeff Tweedy was actually being poetic and I realized that I was wasting my time. You have to know the whole story before you can hear a few words and then think you have it all figured out.

Or you can just listen to Kim. "You are a hurricane, I am the beach. You aren't going to outlive me."

The Smoking Flowers' 2 Guns on CD

It's not that I'm jaded or have low expectations when it comes to listening to a CD from someone new, but it's gotten to the point where I'm floored when I discover someone with true talent and originality. Such is the case with the new album from the Smoking Flowers, 2 Guns. Perhaps it's because Kim and Scott Collins, a Nashville-based singing duo who draw obvious comparisons to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, have been around for a while, opening for such groups as the Black Keys, Ben Folds Five, Ziggy Marley, Concrete Blonde and the Strokes. They've been performing since shortly after they met in 1998, so they're seasoned and not the typical twenty-year-olds who dream of hitting it big while struggling with the pitfalls of such naivety.

The first thing you'll notice about 2 Guns is Kim's voice--despite the aforementioned comparisons she doesn't have Emmylou's delicate warble. She has big pipes and sounds a lot like Ann Wilson from Heart (although on "Something I Said," she seems to channel Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star in the quieter moments of the song). She has a beautiful, impressive voice. Scott, on the other hand, has a more casual grumble that grounds her to the music and keeps her from flying away. They have a loving, familiar way with harmonies that illuminates the years they've spent together. Second, they're damn fine songwriters, and these 13 songs are rich with confidence and craft. You won't find any filler here.

Adding to the poignancy of 2 Guns is the revelation that Kim just emerged victoriously from a battle with breast cancer--the album was actually recorded last year and was delayed until she recovered. None of this leaks into the hard-bitten spirit of the album, for obviously temporal reasons, and what emerges is a Western adventure of sorts, inspired by a Route 66 roadtrip. We're talking about the real 66, the dirt road itself and not the fractured sections of I-40 we know today, and the evidence is there on the cover of the album. Kim took this from the hood of their car. That's them, and that's the road, and that's a real and heartfelt kiss that's captured. In fact, 2 Guns is the name of an Arizona ghost town the couple visited. The lonely surreal atmosphere of that visit permeates the album, where their love is the biggest thing on the horizon.

It's rare that an album captures this kind of unabashed emotion without resorting to hip distancing devices or a wall of sound. On songs like "El Matador" and "The Juggler," you hear the celebration of a couple in love. This is not the couple who embarrasses everyone else in the room with their unbridled PDAs, but a couple of poets who can express such things in a way you haven't heard before. Oh, and I haven't even mentioned how much this album rocks--just in case you were under the impression that this was an album of soulful ballads. ("Pistol Whip," for instance, sounds like a countryfied version of Queen's "Sheer Heart Attack," if you can imagine that!)

This is great stuff, and I highly recommend it.