Album Review: Them Coulee Boys, ‘No Fun in the Chrysalis’
On their fifth album, No Fun in the Chrysalis, Them Coulee Boys emerge from their cocoon ready to fly through colorful musical landscapes. The Wisconsin band’s warm vocals flow over layers of crisp and shimmering instrumentation as they invite us to accompany them on their journeys of transformation.
The album opens with the loping bluegrass rambler “Change, Etc.,” a meditation on the pain and pleasure that change brings—“it’s no fun in the chrysalis”—that swells on waves of fiddle, pedal steel, and lead guitar into a country rocker. The bluesy folk pop number “Up Close” weaves tinkling piano around snaking guitar notes, producing a carnivalesque atmosphere that sounds like the Beatles met up with Steely Dan for a jam session. The propulsive “As Long as You Let Me” is fueled by towering piano chords and crescendos of pedal steel. The crystalline instrumental “Mornings” evokes the dawn rising before it elides into the galloping banjo-driven, harmony-drenched, haunting and cinematic anthem “Mountains,” a tumultuous repartee to the serenity of “Mornings.”
The rollicking “I Can’t Turn It Off” scampers off with a blend of bluegrass and Sixties pop; the song’s tempo slows briefly to a chamber folk meditation about love before rocketing off again into exclamations about the ecstasies of love. The album closes with the uplifting, gospel-inflected, pedal steel-driven affirmation “I Am Not Sad.”
No Fun in the Chrysalis showcases the lyrical and instrumental genius of Them Coulee Boys, and the songs on the album shine gem-like, sparkling with the light of love and joy.
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More information about No Fun in the Chrysalis is available HERE
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