Album Review: Ramshackle Glory - Live the Dream

[This review comes from my buddy Charlie. He's out in the desert right now, but when he has the time he tries to keep his writing from getting rusty. He goes by ChuckBS on Reddit.]

Do you remember Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains? I have a lot of vivid memories of listening to them, their music was exactly what I needed,  it was despondent and nihilistic and damn poetic. It was my jam for any time I had to go out in public for a good six months, and then Pat the Bunny went to rehab and I wrote it off, still despondent and nihilistic and accepting that at that was that and that music I connect to never lasts that long. Or so I thought.

Ramshackle Glory is Pat the Bunny’s new band, and their first album Live the Dream, is a perfect transition from Johnny Hobo and later Wingnut Dishwashers Union. It’s more melancholy than Johnny Hobo, a bit slower and lacking the drug fueled energy that the past bands had. That’s’ mostly because he seems to have kicked the habit.  In a lot of ways it’s more mature. His lyrics still talk about drugs and drinking, but there’s almost a kind of hope in his words. Pat the Bunny sounds like he’s gotten over a hump, only to see that he’s still the same guy, just trying or something different. OK, that may be me projecting, but I think that’s why I really like this album. When I got into Johnny Hobo and the Wingnut Dishwashers Union I really connected to that music. What Pat the Bunny was singing made a lot of sense, or if not I could just relate quite a bit to his feelings. This album manages to do that again. I mean to say that it’s hitting that same level, just that I’m a few years old (and so is Pat the Bunny) and that level is slightly different. He’s not singing about passing out in ditches and missing all his friends who moved a way, he’s singing about wanting freedom from his addictions and missing friends that died.  I guess the easy way to put it is you can hear the fact that he’s been through rehab in his lyrics, and that’s not a bad thing. 

Tracks like Bitter Old Man and We’re All Compost in Training are pretty stand out tracks for me, but I’d say there isn’t a bad song on the album. If anything, More About Alcoholism is a little jarring to follow First Song in terms of the sound and speed of the music, but it works as a song in its own right and with the album as whole.

Live the Dream is definitely worth a listen, especially I you’re a fan of Pat the Bunny’s past work or a somewhat jaded dude who’s learning to cope with the world.

Think it sounds good? Check it out!