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Look, I’m old enough to remember that it was not only acceptable at one time to make an album like this, but actually preferred. And—get this —people enjoyed it. The Wee Hours Revue miraculously maintains a current appeal while channeling faded strains of Oasis, the Jayhawks, the Rolling Stones, and ’90s alt-rock charisma. Does that scare you? It shouldn’t—unless you’re a hipster.
The opening track, “Something Left to Say,” sets a lush, harmonic, and surprisingly urgent tone for the album. Lead singer Skip Matheny delivers the chorus—“The things you’ve done have made me what I am/And that’s catching the bus and half singing the tears of a clown”—with a brattish beauty that Liam Gallagher and Ryan Adams only wish they had.
“You Don’t Belong to This World” is a reflective pop powerhouse that could be the bastard offspring of Whiskeytown and Toad the Wet Sprocket—it begs to be blared through car windows on a road trip. Reading the lyrics to the album, it’s clear that someone in the band is burning a hole through lost love.
“Baby’s Got It in the Genes” is a crestfallen confessional of empty space once occupied, with lines like “When you see a roadside bar/Or an old button down with a cigarette scar/Think of me, babe, ’cause I’ll be thinking of you.”
“Sookie” could be confused for a Twilight Singers cast-off single, but that’s fine; it still paints one of the most perfect pictures of bittersweet I have ever heard. I’m almost convinced they wrote it for me personally. Wee Hours is a complete album laden with genuine lyrics, smart harmonies, and heartbroken pangs in the fade. Don’t believe me? Find an autumn roof and bring a sixer of your favorite beer and this album. You’ll thank me (and Roman Candle).
—S.D.
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