Words: Brett Porter
Photo: Feral Fleur

So as many of you know, I don’t write a lot. It takes something that I care deeply about to keep my attention directed enough to write out an entire article. If you can read this, you know that time has come yet again. Obviously, a staple of Mirth Films’ content is music, so it makes sense that Frankie, myself, and the rest of our satellite team try to look out for local stuff to see if anything tickles our fancy. I never outright look for it per se, but sometimes it jumps up in front of me and hits me dead-center in the soul. For the present moment, the band and album that did that exact thing is a Plattsburgh based two-piece outlaw-country band called Austin and the In-Laws. Their debut EP Songs From the Woodshed is an album I’m recommending for multiple reasons. If you were hanging along solely for a yes/no answer from me, I suppose you can leave… we already got your click. As stated before, I enjoyed this album so much I wanted to provide some of my insights on it because this is a tremendous album.

Quick disclaimer: All of this is my interpretation of what messages I am personally getting from this. We all have opinions, and who knows, maybe ours differ. Please don’t yell at me.

For those with short attention spans, fear not because there’s only five tracks for a total listening time of about 16 minutes. If I had to put a very brief description of the sound and lyricism from the duo, I would simply call it working man’s music. At its core, this is a very blue-collar sounding album. That’s not to say the subject matter lacks any depth, as there is plenty of that to go around. For example, the first track off the album, titled “Trains,” talks about a man as he slowly leaves sobriety as the world around him collapses, the only constant being the sound of the train as it passes by, a subtle hint that just as the train has to run from A to B every day, life too must go on, no matter what you’re going through. How many of us can empathize about something either exactly spot-on to this or similar enough? It’s safe to say most of us out there aren’t living on easy street, and even with our day to day struggles, we still have to keep on movin’.

Since there’s only five songs, I’m not going to dissect every song. I don’t find it all that fair for readers who become first time listeners to the album to go in with preconceived notions about the music before giving it a listen themselves. With that in mind, the only other song I want to talk about is their fourth track, “Plowman’s Lunch.” Without ostracizing too much of our followers, I assume a wide majority of you know what it’s like to live in an area with brutal winters, and how much it ruins your day to wake up for work only to see that your driveway, car, and whole town were hit with a metric fuckton of snow overnight, and of course someone has to make those roads safe and usable for when the rest of the world wakes up. I can’t say I know any plow drivers personally, but I can at the very least say one of them saved me back in the winter of 2019. My car had unexpectedly shit the bed on my way home from the bar. I was miles from both home and civilization, and the snow was coming down fast. As I tried to walk to the closest gas station, flagging down at least five cars in the process along the way who kept driving as if I wasn’t there, a plow truck stopped and gave me a ride, probably saving my dumb ass in the process. It takes a special breed of human being to be willing to wake up incredibly early, drive in the worst possible road conditions, and work until the snow stops coming down. Of all the tracks on this album, this is the one that I think embodies the working man spirit. As the song progresses it does get darker, as the average person cannot sign up for such a terrible bill of goods without some kind of way to stay alert and motivated. As this fictitious plowman’s night starts, it seems innocent, as his “lunch” consists of beef jerky and an energy shot, but by the end, homeboy’s diet becomes pills, beer, and a bag of chips. Without diving too deep into something I could be completely wrong about, I find it to personify how hellish that line of work is, and I can’t say I blame anyone who has to use similar coping mechanisms to keep afloat during a snowstorm. Safe to say, one of the thankless jobs around here and even having a song like this is a nice subtle nod to the industry.

Before I cut this off and roll back into bed, the thing about Austin and the In-Laws’ sound and music as a whole that I gravitate toward is that they are so similar to Johnny Cash while also by no means ripping off the man in black. If anything, one could say this is a slightly nuanced take on this outlaw style of music. If you ask anyone, Cash himself in many ways, from his attire to his songs, identified with the poor and the downtrodden. Austin and the In-Laws’ debut album appears to do the same, and to anyone who is a blue-collar man or just likes this style of music, should listen to this album at least once, a few times over if you have the time. You can check out their EP by clicking here.

I hope you guys enjoyed this review, and if there’s anything resembling positive feedback, I may do another. Love you, bye.