The Steel Wheels – Sideways (2024)


Review:
ust a few songs into Sideways, the latest from long-running Virginia-based Roots and Americana band The Steel Wheels, it’s clear that the group has been dealing with some heavy issues. Hell, it’s even laid out in “Wait On You,” the album’s first track: “This year hit like a hurricane. The winds they knocked me over.” But even when singing a sad song about life’s obstacles, The Steel Wheel’s knack for mixing sweet harmonies with compelling instrumentation sure makes being sad feel pretty good. And there are certainly some heart-wrenching moments here, especially on “Easy On Your Way,” about the sudden death of fiddle player and vocalist Eric Brubaker’s young daughter. It starts with some acoustic finger plucking and fiddle before the lyrics kick in (“She’s gone, and she won’t come back/Tell me there’s a God in that/Get on your knees and pray” ). It’s a gut punch of a song once again dressed up in a beautiful soundtrack. But even in that tragedy, the band finds a way to find optimism ending the song with the “Lift your voice when I am gone… Easy on your way.” The feeling of helplessness in that song is a theme that pops up again and again across the record. And the band also populates the album with two strong instrumentals (“Dissidents” and “Past The Breaks”), a reminder of sorts to their string band beginnings. Together now for close to twenty years, there has been a subtle change to the band’s sound over the decades. They no longer simply play acoustic instruments and have evolved from being a string band; the lyrics have gotten more ambitious and their sound has matured impressively, but they are still a band from Appalachia that have chosen to go it their own way – down to putting out their albums on their own label – forgoing musical trends in favor of doing it their own way. And while Sideways may be their most musically adventurous record yet, it is still very much a Steel Wheels album. Frontman Trent Wagler may have well been describing the record when he said recently, “It’s beautiful and crushing to be alive sometimes. We aren’t here to sing songs that only cut one way — but if they do, they’ll cut sideways.” — By John Moore at glidemagazine.com


 


Track List:
01 - Wait On You
02 - Baby Gone
03 - Sideways
04 - Hero
05 - Enemy
06 - Dissidents
07 - Good Thing Now
08 - Morning Before Long
09 - Yes I Know
10 - Past the Breaks
11 - Easy On Your Way
12 - Just Like the Wind


Media Report:
Genre: americana
Country: Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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