By: Sam Houghton
Rating: 8/11

Kill Henry Sugar are probably too big to be considered underground. Although they play small, intimate venues like Barbes in Park Slope and Banjo Jim’s in the West Village, they’re in the midst of planning their tenth tour of Europe. They have a large New York following, and can claim a world wide following. They play the instrumentation to the opening score of Showtime’s Weeds. They’ve made it. However, they are a local New York band and perhaps they can bring a little inspiration to our pre-blossoming musicians/readers.

Kill Henry Sugar is a band to see when the frenzied streets of NYC have ransacked your brain enough. Instead of a trip into the wilderness, just throw on Swing Back And Down (Surprise Track Entertainment - 2007). It reeks of the rustic, smoky hills of Appalachia. The story telling is masterful and sometimes the songs are humorously ironic, mocking Gotham and all its superficial glory, while other times, they conjure images of toothless banjo pickers lurking on their porches in the deep South.

Although the album starts out slow with “Where the Road Ends” and “At the Mall,” two comical tracks, they both lead into the hit on the album: “Tammany Hall.” “Tammany Hall,” a simplified and folked out “Street Fighting Man,” tells the story of the hopeless battle against the man. “I got burned/so I burned it down/ but they’re just gonna put it up again.” And then later: “I wont get back for courage/ What the great metropolis took/ They left my backbone hollow/ Like the words in a holy book.” Although the words suggest a forlorn battle, the beat of the song, the Dean Sharenow’s thumping bass drum, urges you to believe that the fight itself rocks.

Another gem on the album, “Puerto Rican Day Parade,” has guitarist/banjoist and singer Erik Della Penna bleeding lyrics over a simple shaker rhythm and soft resonator picking. It’s got a smooth, cheery feeling, like holding a new girlfriend’s hand and strolling through the park. “Mule Got Loose” shows the bands grasp on the blues, while remaining folk. Cut bare to the bone, Penna’s edgy guitar compares to the gall in Jack White’s ripping riff on “Ball and a Biscuit.” The vocals of both Penna and Sharenow, the rhythm maker and occasional dobro pro, bears close to that Hank Williams nasally drawl, while at the same time, there’s a resemblance to that chest heavy, Southern bellow of Greg Allman.

With a typical banjo folk band you might think of skirt flying how-downs. Swing Back And Down only gives you tastes of the whooping parties. It lurks in the music somewhere, in a teasing way, and in the yodeling and romping that never comes, the anticipation for it fuels the album through to the end. That’s why they are deemed roots music: the modesty. Blues, the true roots of rock and roll, is brilliant in it’s simplicity. The deep feeling of blues music, the beauty of it is in its modesty. They don’t ram all the notes down your throat, but let you understand and see the music for yourself. Kill Henry Sugar understands this notion. They understand that by leaving silence in their sound, it allows for the listeners imagination take hold and give the music a dynamic, full sound.