Dwight Ritcher Band – Drive Around Town

Dwight Ritcher Band – Drive Around Town / 2002 Self-Released / 12 Tracks / http://www.dwightritcherband.com / Reviewed 02 September 2004

A more musically acceptable version of Dave Matthews and John Maher, the Dwight Ritcher Band plays that same style of innocuous jam-band music that seems at place at any frat kegger. A lack of energy mars what could possibly be a solid track in the opener, “It’s True”. The incorporation of brass during “One Time” is a desperate ploy to try to infuse what is normally a very trite musical genre with the very essence of what is considered cool by balding, thirtyish college dropouts trying to still seem relevant. This is not the enflamed brass lines of the earliest days of jazz, but a very close cousin of the fare found on the Weather Channel. Dwight Ritcher has a very smooth voice and almost is able to create hooks the remain in eir’s audiences minds, but just doesn’t achieve it – the mastering of the disc create a wall of hiss between the lyrics and the listener, permanently keeping them from ever reaching a possible fanbase.

The plodding tempo of the title track stop any momentum that the disc was gaining up to this point, and all but forces any audience to skip through this track. Now, I’m not anti-slow song, but putting it relatively early in the disc is the perfect way to ensure that one loses a large portion of their audience early. The ultimate folly of “Drive Around Town” is the back-to-back nature of the two droning, extremely slow-tempo songs in the aforementioned title track, and going right into “Better yet”.It is only in “Never Alone” in which Dwight’s outright aping of different musical styles actually succeeds. In a track that would work if Ella Fitzgerald was singing it, the sultry voice mixed with a muted piano provides a perfect partnership, aided by the fact that Dwight assumes more of a Warren Zevon-tone to eir’s voice.

Each track revisits the same ground as its immediate forebears, and nothing new is approached practically for the entire time of the disc. If the translation of Dwight’s influenced were more successful, with 60s doo-wop powering a track like “Hollow Side”, the disc would be solid even if it wasn’t that original. Even after shaking off the cobwebs with a more jazz-influenced track “Get It Straight”, the sheer amount of ennui exuded by the brunt of the CD makes the track inconsequential. If you want a good, solid band that does this style of music, pick up Majestic Twelve.

Top Tracks: One Time, Get It Straight

Rating: 3.0/10