Jared Grabb
Where Do You Hide Your Love Songs? [12-inch] (2010)
Brian Shultz
The musical progression through which Jared Grabb led his band, Scouts Honor, over the years, involved a rough folk-punk sound at its outset and by the end had become a filthy, sludgy stoner rock sound. So perhaps it makes sense that Grabb's first solo effort would be a little more in line with Scouts Honor's earlier stuff, but often stripped of any heavier instrumentation and presented with a graceful air.
Where Do You Hide Your Love Songs? moves with an easygoing, pop-tinged folk and even occasionally bluegrass-esque trajectory. "Born of the Woods" is the prettier. minimal opener that gives way to Grabb's more shuffling "Stuart Nelson." While the next few songs seem to expose a bit of lethargy that's dragging the record, the lazy twang on it doesn't necessarily kill it completely.
"Devil Between," which comes shortly thereafter, ensures Grabb still has some more energetic, charged numbers. Fierce strums, a hallowed southern narrative of sorts and the addition of an electric to ramp up the sound at the end makes it an easy standout. And when he follows with the morose, slow-moving and banjo-assisted "True Blue"--what seems like a short tale of cuckold murder--it serves a necessary contrast to the album's mid-section.
Grabb guides the rest of Love Songs with a pleasantness and an amenable candor, though it doesn't ever quite rise above just that. But the intermittent storytelling is solid, and the otherwise wide stable of love songs at hand--which no one is certainly hiding--are sweet without being saccharin.