Somewhere on the Golden Coast

It’s hard to tell what the real Henry Clay—the 19th-century Kentucky senator known as “the Great Compromiser”—has to do with the Henry Clay People. First off, the band is based in L.A. Second, and more importantly, listening to Somewhere on the Golden Coast, there isn’t a hint of compromise to be found anywhere on the record. These guys pull off a number of tough tasks on this album, and they manage to do them all at once. They’re both a beer-soaked rock band and a sweet, SoCal pop act. There’s both a youthful energy and a mature complexity to these songs, and while the lyrics are clever, the band always come across with a guileless, pretense-free vibe at every turn.

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The Henry Clay People's Joey Siara's a bit of a talk-singer, and spends some time on his third LP, Somewhere on the Golden Coast, pontificating on "the scene." His band combines the kind of no-nonsense bar rock of the Stones and the Replacements with the easygoing left coast blur of Weezer and Pavement. If, over the course of their three LPs, people have been trying to peg Los Angeles' The Henry Clay People as a sort of California Hold Steady, it's understandable. Siara's got a certain way with the pen; his wit can be sly, slightly acerbic, his delivery conversational, his phrasing often clever, his rare joke funny. But, bound together in song, all that can feel like a bit of a jumble; his travelogues and character sketches lack a certain attention to detail and too rarely cohere into much beyond quips and overstatements. It comes off not like Finn's tableau-settlng scene reports, but rather the fake Craig Finn lyrics Twitter; fitfully clever, admirable in their intent, but not quite the real deal.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010