Back in the mid-’90s, when it really felt like music mattered, there was a band who encompassed the ready-to-implode danger of Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones and the feral sensuality of Lou Reed’s shape-shifting masterpiece Transformer. That band was Jonathan Fire*Eater, and for a tumultuous hot minute they ruled their little pocket of college radio-approved alternative rock with their major label debut Wolf Songs for Lambs. With hard to decipher pseudo-intellectual musings and pithy euphemisms, Wolf Songs for Lambs chronicled sexual escapades and eloquently recounted drug-fueled hallucinations that helped to bolster the band’s Lower East Side rock n’ roll aesthetic. Unfortunately, like most promising bands of the ’90s Jonathan Fire*Eater broke up–due mainly to the outlandish antics and drug use of lead singer Stewart Lupton.
While three members went on to form the successful off-the-radar quintet the Walkmen, Lupton went back to school, cleaned up his act and eventually formed Dylan-esque outfit The Child Ballads along with co-vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Betsy Wright, drummer Hugh Mcintosh and guitarist Judah Bauer. On their debut EP Cheekbone Hollows (Pop. 1/2 Life), Lupton and company transport the listener to an almost high-minded fairytale town called Cheekbone Hollows where whimsical stories become grounded by earthy percussion, slide guitar, male-female vocal harmonies and tongue-twisting lyrics. Taking their name from a 19th century compilation of poems, this outfit is a far cry from Lupton’s debauched past with an easy-going sound that’s more akin to urban country than the sometimes inconsistent flying off-the-hinges rock. With solid tracks like “Old Man October,” which incorporates a shaky pop percussion with falsetto “ohhhs,” and the dreamy “Laughter From the Rafters” which employs Lupton’s signature growl and a romantic “Beast of Burden” sway, the Child Ballads show that musical maturity isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
