Ten Day Bender by The Whipsaws

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The case image is a scan of stained canvas, the work is labeled as "by the Whipsaws" and songs are listed in chapters, not tracks. The CD booklet proclaims the 10 compositions "a novel."

A novel? I was excited to see those words. When the infrequent concept album comes along, it is rarely so cohesive as to compare to an entire work of fiction. I expected to follow the lives of a few characters, people I'd know well by the album's end.

So it's too bad that I listened to the whole thing with that expectation in mind. Because this is a wonderful, interesting work -- no doubt built along unified themes and images -- but it's no novel.

I could happily settle, though, for a collection of short stories, told alt.country-style. Stories heavy on roots, heavy on liquor, heavy on screwing up and heavy on learning lessons. Stories speckled by the jewels of Alaska place names: Nelchina, Jim Creek, the Butte. Stories of love lost.

The songwriting on "Ten Day Bender" honors the narrative form only country music can: A young man escapes a troubled family but perishes working on a crab boat, his final thought resting on the teary face of the girl he left; a boy befriends the wrong crowd, skips school, does time, plunges into addiction but surfaces later; a drug dealer boasts about a transaction that will make him rich, or so he hopes.

The soul of the CD, though, lies in the music itself, a spirited latticework of bass and drums and all manner of strings. Every song is a grouping of parts not so much woven together as layered on top of one another in a perfectly synchronized fashion that begs the listener to hear each expressive instrument separately: the doleful fiddle on "Hole In My Heart," the singing lap steel on "Shotgun Wedding."

With some imagination, really, the musical parts, articulate as they are, can almost seem like characters in a novel themselves.

- Lillie Dremeaux, Anchorage Daily News

The Whipsaws - Evan Phillips on guitar, harmonica and vocals, Aaron Benolkin on guitar, lap steel and vocals, Wade Collins on bass and vocals and James Dommek, Jr. on drums and vocals - play music they like to call “hillbilly rock.” It's full of twang and vocals that, though often sung by lifelong Alaskans, have a southern accent. “This last year, we listened to the Drive-By Truckers a shitload,” said Phillips. “So naturally, our album has that influence in there.” The Drive-By Truckers are a southern band that sing a lot about the “dirty south.” Phillips says The Whipsaws sing a lot about what happens, or could happen, in the “big, cold north.”

The album, Ten Day Bender, is 10 songs that the guys spent three weeks recording this summer. The album includes pieces such as “Petersville,” a truly Alaska outlaw song about miners and murders, and “Shotgun Wedding.” With a title like that, you know The Whipsaws are sticking to that same ol' Americana stuff they're known for.

- Monica Bradbury, Anchorage Press

"Sounds like: Neil Young rides shotgun with the Drive By Truckers."

-Josh Niva

Anchorage Daily News

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