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Album Details

• Artist: Rob Crow
• Album: Living Well
• Label: Temporary Residence
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2007-02-02

Media

Do you know Rob Crow? Let's step back a minute. Do you know Pinback, or The Ladies, or maybe Goblin Cock, or how about Thingy? If you have heard or heard of any of these bands you have heard of Rob Crow. You see, Crow is probably one of indie rock's most prolific songwriter going. Almost as much as fellow bearded man Will Oldham. Rob decided to take things a little easier this past year because he became a father, and anyone who is a parent knows that priorities change drastically at the time of your firstborn. Living Well is a collection of songs that are a little more personal than anything Crow has done with Pinback, and not surprisingly they are some of his best songs he's ever penned. These songs could have gone into a Pinback style production but instead he decided to keep them as simple as possible and in the end keeping them paired down and leaving them wide open. As with some of his other work, Crow's production makes Living Well so listenable. It is almost magical in the way that if feels like there is so much going on when there is actually very little. On "Over Your Heart" there is little more than a piano, drums and vocals but the way the vocals are layered makes it sound huge.

One of my favorite tracks is "Levelling". It could be such a big song but the fact that Crow decided to keep it mostly acoustic makes it that much more powerful. He also takes it out on himself on the self-hating "I Hate You, Rob Crow", provided here in two versions.

Rob Crow is prolific but like Ryan Adams the material he puts out is always of high quality and very easy to get into. I would recommend Living Well even for people who haven't heard of Pinback. Although Crow looks like a guitar player of a black metal band on the cover is of no consequence. This music is indie pop at its finest.

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