The Coal Porters - How Dark This Earth Will Shine (2022)

The Coal Porters started life as a country-accented rock band in the manner of Sid Griffin's best-known project, the Long Ryders, but with time Griffin revamped the group into an acoustic band with strong bluegrass leanings, and How Dark This Earth Will Shine is the first Coal Porters studio set to document this change in direction. While the bluegrass Coal Porters sounded swell on The Chris Hillman Tribute Concerts, which was compiled from live tapes and focused on material associated with the country-rock icon, How Dark This Earth Will Shine is at once a good bit more ambitious and a little less satisfying. Griffin is still a fine and evocative songwriter, as "Fair Play, Virginia" and "Maybe I'll Cry Tomorrow" prove, and he's singing well on these sessions, but the selections from bandmate Pat McGarvey are a bit less impressive, and though the idea of a bluegrass cover of "Teenage Kicks" sounds like fun, the results are underwhelming. The album's real failing, however, is the decided lack of energy that comes through on disc; while the Chris Hillman tribute showed the band catching fire in front of an appreciative audience, all alone in the studio the group is conspicuously lacking in magnetism, and while Griffin's bandmates are solid musicians, there's a "roots music by numbers" feel to many of the cuts that's frankly dispiriting. Sid Griffin deserves to be recognized as one of the key precursors of the alt-country movement, and the best moments of How Dark This Earth Will Shine prove he's still in command of his muse and has more great records left in him. The trouble is, he needs a better set of collaborators if those records are ever going to get made, and this album is enjoyable but ultimately doesn't hit the spot. ~ Mark Deming