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Basking in Justin Bieber's Never Say Never

Music Features

Further + Further

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK: Roy Davis and the Dregs.

All of these good choices come to bear on the much-improved sophomore disc. Davis has found his range as a singer, cultivating his alt-country accent and knowing his limits, and broadened his sound, getting both more raucous and more stripped-down at various times. While there is still much familiar here — shades of Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams, even Waylon Jennings — Davis spreads his influences around enough that he’s made an album any alt-country fan can comfortably settle into, but doesn’t feel like a knock-off.

I’m not sure there’s a tune as good as “We’ll Always Be” from his debut disc, which still gets a spot in a playlist or two, but the 12 new songs are consistently better as a whole. The disc definitely gets out of the gate well, with a countrified electric-guitar riff paired with a banjo and drums kicking out a three-note backbone I believe is called a "ruff" to open “Please Go Home,” then rolls into this great lead couplet: “Doing 65 in a speed limit 20, with my back against the wall/It’s alright honey, I’d be so fucking rich if lies were money, but instead I got a car.” Davis’s lyrics often have this odd nonsensical cant to them, but when you tease them out, like the Mulder and Scully reference that comes later in this tune, they usually make sense in an X-Files sort of way.

That was Charlie Rose on the banjo, and Davis does well with a number of other guests. Travis Kline’s Wurlitzer warms up the title track, a juxtaposition with the coldness of the chorus, “cuz after all, you’re still my/Deadweight.” Zach Jones rips a great solo after the second chorus of “Till the Night Is Gone,” aping the enthusiasm of Davis’s hey, hey, hey-ey-eys. And Jon Nolan supplies guitars, backing vocals, even “Monster Noises” on a number of tracks here.