Lazy-boy rock done right
The Henry Clay People’s Somewhere on the Golden Coast finds the SoCal rockers staying true to the form they established on their 2008 debut, For Cheap or For Free. Amid pounding E-Street keys and scuzzy guitar squall, brothers Andy and Joey Siara intone anthem after townie anthem with the cadence of Stephen Malkmus and the brassy enthusiasm of The Hold Steady. Over the course of ten tightly-wound songs, they get drunk and call in sick (“Working Part Time”), find a couch to crash on (the rollicking barroom foot-stomper “End of an Empire”) and sound out half-baked feelings of detachment (“This Ain’t a Scene”). It’s a lively portrait of the mildly disaffected, couch-surfing wage-laborer that’s a staple in any music community, painted by five guys who quit the day job circuit just last year. You don’t have to have schlepped your way through a restaurant kitchen in support of your music habit to enjoy Golden Coast; we’ve all been “dyin’ for a Saturday night” before, and that’s just the kind of fun this fivesome’s third album delivers.