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The Mendoza Line, "30 Year Low"
This set marks the end of Tim Bracy and Shannon McArdles' marriage and musical collaboration. 30 Year Low is a terrific document of the death of love, the inevitability of aging, and is proof positive that in all musical genres, quality matters more than anything else.
This is a sophisticated album invested with personal conviction. The Mendoza Line handle the subject matter (bars, bedrooms, heartbreaks and fears), and the unadorned old-school instrumentation (guitars, bass drums, piano) with a masterful aplomb that lifts 30 Year Low above the average alt-country rock. Mixing the personal and political, the opening track "Since I Came" is sung from the perspective of a pregnant immigrant laborer at a chicken factory in the backwoods of Georgia. Her husband has been killed, possibly murdered, leaving her to survive with their two daughters. The song shuffles along, sad and subtle, but the smell of feathers and the fear of unwanted sexual attention are overwhelming. McArdle’s voice captures feelings of being undocumented and vulnerable, lonely and fleetingly suicidal, before emerging defiant and determined: "Could I find my way out/ Could my two girls grow up to be free/ If you ever touch a hair on their heads/ If you ever look at them the way you do me." "Since I Came" could stand as a companion piece to Merry Men, Carolyn Chute's book about ordinary people discarded by President Reagan's voodoo economics.
"Aspect Of An Old Maid" is a splendid mid-tempo duet, on which the accusatory insights pick up. It has an old-fashioned quality stemming from the decorous harmonica and a words-to-the-bar ratio that was not even "the future of rock and roll" circa 1975. Disgust and contempt have never sounded so much fun as on "31 Candles," which takes the album up another gear. On this song, McArdle spits in the face of infidelity, naivety, and music biz bullshit. The words of Hunter S. Thompson come to mind: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
When couples split up there is a tendency for friends to think they must choose sides and which person to stay in touch with. To my ears, Shannon McArdle's voice is the more versatile, and the way she sings the word "fuck" is very endearing. After "I Lost My Taste," Timothy Bracy's drawl was really getting on my nerves and I was certain that McArdle would be the only one I would listen to in future. It was a surprise then, that Bracy's slow composition "Love On Parole" turned out to be a highlight. Mainly accompanying his voice with piano and sparse drumming, he dissects the rearrangements, truces, terms and conditions which lovers go through in a relationship. The song is part confessional, part ode to uncomplicated lust, part verbose rationale, but wholly convincing and sad.
Released along with the mini-album is The Final Remarks of the Legendary Malcontent: a bonus disc of live tracks, radio appearances, rehearsal takes, covers, and demos. The pale renditions of other people's breakup songs from some classic albums, demonstrate that The Mendoza Line sound best when communicating in the pace, tone and cadence of their own inner voices, (though on 30 Year Low they do a fine version of the late Jimmy Silva's "Tell It To The Raven"). The willful sloppiness will appeal to those who enjoy the warts-and-all approach or who simply must hear them clump through Cole Porter or Richard Thompson's "Withered And Died." I wish it had been released separately, because 30 Year Low has an almost perfect balance of hurt and toughness, care and humor, spunk and weariness, literal and metaphorical. Sweetly, neither songwriter hogs the credits. McArdle and Bracey bring equal craft and humanity to their songs, whether they are rowdy, angry, gentle, bitter, or lewd. This is a smart, beautiful, and harmonious record, all the more poignant with the knowledge that they are at the very point of breaking up.
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