Vigilantes of Love

Item: Welcome To Struggleville
Author: Brian Quincy Newcomb

Welcome To Struggleville

(1994)

Reviewed by Brian Quincy Newcomb

Discogs Bandcamp

Label Fingerprint / Capricorn RecordsSyndicateAug 1994

alternative rock americana folk rock

If Bob Dylan had joined together in the late 80s with the rhythm section of R.E.M. and Bob Mould (Husker Du/Sugar) on guitar like he did with The Band in the 60s, that would be the best point of comparison for the song-strong focus of Vigilantes Of Love. While signed to Capricorn—a label known for the jam consciousness of the Allman Brothers in the 70s and Widespread Panic these days—Vigilantes' Newton Carter plays a guitar that'll part your hair, but consistently on Welcome To Struggleville the band's musical prowess is not an end in itself. Rather, the passionate bursts from Carter's guitar and the top-flight rhythms of punchy drummer Travis McNabb and melodic bassist David LaBruyere are set in the context that best serves the songs of Bill Mallonee.

Mallonee's raspy voice and intense acoustic rhythm playing set the stage for vignettes filled with characters from a world too real to look at without the aid of poetry and metaphor. Poetic words and metaphors Mallonee provides aplenty. What distinguishes his songs is they connect at both a literate and emotive level, while still managing to connect successfully with fine alternative rock sounds and melodies.

Mallonee brought the vision of Vigilantes of Love through a variety of incarnations, each one emphasizing his songs and the passion of live performance. The personnel has varied, from the singer/songwriter performances of Jugular, the punk-rock dominated Driving The Nails and the alternative folk/rock Killing Floor, co-produced by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and the late, great Mark Heard. The impression consistent through Mallonee's writing is all the more cemented on Welcome To Struggleville: His is a vision and insight worth hearing. The words he chooses and music created in collaboration with the band has a depth to communicate lines like "Going down to the freight-yard, down in the pouring rain/Gonna play some sad guitar, stand out in the hurricane" with authority and no small amount of visceral conviction.

Dripping with irony, without sliding into dispassionate cynicism, Mallonee screams invectives at a world unfit for the cultivation of human spirits in "Babylon," "All Messed Up" and the title track. "Vet" captures the plight of those who returned from the failed war in Vietnam with "cauterized brain and a heart shot off at the knees," while "Cold Ground" decries the racism that is a legacy of the South.

Mallonee concludes that life's greatest questions and deepest pains find their resolve in the cross of Christ, even as he recognizes that this is not a popular conclusion: "I know His passion, suffering and pain, give me an honest minute/ I will explain everything," he sings. In "All Messed Up" he rephrases scripture, "God is my hope and God is my strength/Very present help in trouble," before affirming "Take the true and the real from the false and the fake and the mountains reduce to rubble."

Now with this top flight major label effort, and an upcoming tour slated to open for Michael Been and The Call, Vigilantes of Love may soon escape the label of Best Unknown Band. Here's hopin'.