MARCH 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS

Drag the River - You Can't Live This Way

album cover

By Nate Harper

Drag the River got big and they stuck around - what more could Fort Collins music fans ask for? And for every formal show at the Starlight or the Aggie there were hours-long jam sessions at Surfside or acoustic solo shows that gave an already personal band an even greater feeling of intimacy. Indeed Drag the River doesn’t even need the lens of history to be remembered as a great band, instead, they’re already missed.
Songwriters Jon Snodgrass and Chad Price are still performing after the band parted ways in May of 2007, but their final release as a group, “You Can’t Live This Way,” came out earlier this year, so for doleful fans, who couldn’t make any of their short-lived reunion shows, the album is the last real piece of Drag the River that they’ll get, and the band has left on a solid, if somber, last note.

One always wonders if the band knows they’re finishing up together while writing their final songs, because even for a band that’s never been afraid to put some sadness and loss into their music, “You Can’t Live This Way” has an almost elegiac tone. The first track, The Death of the Life of the Party, comes off as a farewell to fans, a rare opportunity to deliver your own eulogy, and it’s embraced by the band!

Of course not every song is a sad remembrance of yesterday – the band can still can rock when they want to, and they do on a few tracks, giving fans a chance to raise their glasses and get a little rowdy, even if it’s just while listening to this record at home.

Though alt-country is as nebulous a genre as any, really only saying you can expect steel guitars and big choruses, which “You Can’t Live This Way” certainly has, it does little to inform fans what a successful exercise in songwriting this record is. Drag the River was always tough to pigeonhole, and here they shine as understanding lyricists, putting some emotional heft behind their always impressive mix swelling electric and warm acoustic guitar work.

You always hate to see your favorite bands go, but there’s the hope that the disparate members will come out with something as good as or better than their previous output, and that it was this creative onus that led to their parting of ways. As popular and personable as Drag the River was, they will be a tough act to follow, and “You Can’t Live This Way” gives them an honest, if unwanted, cue to exit on.