One of my favorites of the year so far is Collin Herring’s The Other Side of Kindness.
“Back of your Mind” starts of the album with a bang — just a great roots rock song — the perfect blend of driving guitars, grit and a melodic hook. Its one of the best new songs I’ve heard this year and really had my hopes up for what Collin has to offer. The next track, “Aphorism” is also solid, a mid-tempo number that really reminds me of Whiskeytown (in fact much of the album does).
“Sinkhole of Love” is next, a mellow number that works because of how it follows the previous two tracks. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the album is more of the same, dusty western ballads with little of the rock n roll greatness that track #1 showed Herring has inside him. Two tracks are instrumentals, which are fine to listen to but don’t add a whole lot to the big picture.
The only tracks that break the pattern are “Lazy Wind” and “Into the Morning”, both of which use some weird distortion that takes away from the songs. The latter is still a decent track, but the production on “Lazy Wind” really has me scratching my head (and hitting “skip”).
The second half of the album does have some pretty good tracks, but as I said before they are all the same tempo, and nothing comes close to the breakthrough of “Back of Your Mind”. I waited and waited for the next kick-@ss rocker, and it never came.
As Hubie Brown would say, this guy has TREmendous upside, but he hasn’t quite put together his masterpiece yet. Still, this is a solid album and worth picking up if you’re like me and always looking for good new artists.