Music Review // Ginger Bug "My Magnolia"

https://gingerbug.bandcamp.com/album/my-magnolia

When first listening to "My Magnolia" I could hear elements of Tom Petty, specifically "Last Dance With Mary Jane", but I find as I listen to the rest of the album that comparing Ginger Bug with Tom Petty is accurate because they both seem to take a trip across different aspects of rock music while staying in mostly the same ground.  That is to say, Ginger Bug covers a lot of that rock n roll / country type of genres but in doing so manages to create their own brand of rock n roll which can feel both familiar and new at the same time.

There is this sort of rambling guitar sound on "North Child" while "If I Let You In My Heart, Would You Get Out of My Head?" has more of a Buddy Holly sound but with those classic rock n roll undertones.   There are also those big clean guitar chords.  "Hard to Be Strangers" is dreamy but somewhat like The Replacements.   Ginger Bug just has that connection somewhere between The Hold Steady and Zoo Front where it can be rock but on different levels.   An underlying of Americana (which shifts is slightly toward country at times) also seems to be ever present.

A song such as "Shameless Love", which is one of my favorites on the album, has more of a dance feeling to the rock side, like Franz Ferdinand.   In ways these songs can also just feel like the blues and by the end the titular track comes across acoustic, which is the way albums used to end when albums had more of a proper structure.   "My Magnolia" does keep a steady pace throughout, only letting up for the end, and it can take you in time back to the dawn of rock n roll and up to as recently as something from the current music scene such as Foo Fighters without missing a beat in between.

Lyrically each song offers what the title says, as is on brand with rock music in that 1950's dreamy era.  I enjoy the song "I Will Make Peace" lyrically because of the opening lines: "I will make peace with this body / I will make peace with this government".   I feel like as we grow older we grow more accepting where we just want to be at peace rather than always trying to fight and this song captures that.   You can definitely take what you will out of these lyrics for yourself but the way that Ginger Bug creates this sound which isn't really the same on any two songs but is still all tied back to where you know you're listening to the same album is master class in Rock N Roll 101.