“Soon Enough”
from the album Tournament of Hearts
2005
iTunes
MP3 – “Soon Enough” [right-click/save-as]
Constantines may be the heaviest band currently working the indie rock circuit. They aren’t the loudest, the fastest or the punkest outfit around, but like Tournament of Hearts‘ cover, their music is as simple, solid and rough as a pile of rocks. A start-to-finish listen, like a sixty-hour work week, will leave you exhausted, panting and calloused, but enriched in a way that only a time-and-a-half paycheck can achieve. The most remarkable thing about Tournament of Hearts is that technically, it is the Constantines’ slowest, jazziest, most countrified release to date, but it doesn’t give an inch of intensity when it’s compared to their self-titled debut or the landmark Shine a Light. Much of this can be attributed to the ferocity of their musicianship, but mostly it’s just a testament to the fact that no amount of distortion, speed or power chords can ever truly replace the potency of raw emotional honesty.
Bryan Webb’s I-just-gargled-broken-glass vocals have long been the most recognizable element of the Constantines’ music. There’s enough texture in his voice to sand an entire armoire into a breadbasket; his most aggressive moments make him sound like Lemmy from Motörhead, but at his prettiest, he can match Tom Waits for sheer wounded balladry. The space between the two extremes has gotten much smaller this time around, as most of Tournament of Hearts‘ tunes land somewhere between DC post-punk and Springsteen-style blue-collar rock. The extreme juxtaposition of the genres was one of Shine a Light‘s most intriguing qualities, but it isn’t missed on Tournament of Hearts. Frankly, as the band has shortened the distance, they’ve come closer to finding a sound that’s uniquely their own — loud, rough, beautiful and exhausting, all at once. “Draw Us Lines”‘ brutally simple tribal rhythms, for example, would never qualify as punk rock, but when drummer Doug MacGregor finally delivers the two call-to-arms snare cracks that usher in the explosive walls of guitar, the song grows heavy enough to sink a small boat. Even when the Constantines are applying their technical chops to different genres, like in the jazzy rhythms of “Love in Fear,” it still sounds like jazz played by monsters — every note carries the urgency of an entire Germs album.
Every great album has one truly great song that works as a fulcrum to balance and ground the rest of the music. Tournament of Hearts has the remarkable “Soon Enough,“ whose sad country tinges wrap up the album’s wounded maturity in one simple line: “Your Gentleman father would pray for a daughter / as he walked from room to room saying / ‘Women are winning the tournament of hearts. Somebody’s got to lose…’ / Soon enough, work and love will make a man out of you.”