Big thanks to the Ft Worth Star-Telegram for this feature! Singer-songwriter Ronnie Fauss, based in Dallas but signed to New West Records’ Americana imprint, Normaltown Records, has fashioned Built to Break, the follow-up to his 2012 label debut ( I Am the Man You Know I’m Not).The record owes a considerable sonic debt to another Dallas-formed act: the Old 97’s. It’s no accident Rhett Miller pops up on Eighteen Wheels, trading verses with Fauss about Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris. Elsewhere, Fauss — notably on the album’s opening one-two punch, Another Town and A Natural End — powerfully evokes the 97’s brand of rock that’s just barely country, or maybe it’s the other way around. That’s not to suggest Break, produced by Fauss with Sigurdur Birkis at Nashville’s The Bakery, is some kind of reductive rip-off. Instead, these 11 songs, which include a sterling cover of Phosphorescent’s Song for Zula, are the continuation of a sound and style as inextricably tied to Dallas as Neiman Marcus or Jerry Jones. Fauss makes it his own — his duet with Jenna Paulette on Never Gonna Last is a highlight — and cements his place among his contemporaries.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 19:20:27 +0000
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