New Jersey's own The Roadside Graves are one of the most criminally underrated bands working right now. The simple fact is that they have written some of the most heartbreaking songs I have ever heard. Try listening to "Oh Boy, It's a Girl" (which bleakly concludes "It's a cruel world/Thank God it finally caught up with me") without ending up with an eye full of tears. Tomorrow, Autumn Tone is rereleasing the band's hard-to-find first record If Shacking Up is All You Want To Do. The rerelease of the album is just a prelude to a new EP, You Won't Be Happy With Me, on March 23rd.I can't recommend picking up the reissue enough. The centerpiece of the album is "Song for a Dry State," a stunning 6 minutes of ghostly Americana. Lyricist John Gleason drives the listener through the forgotten pockets of the country. This isn't the exhilarating road song of hack Beat writers; this is song about inexplicable sadness, irreconcilable exhaustion. The song is a never-ending escape route: it circles around, vainly searching for a destination. Gleason understands that there's no safe haven from the past you're running from ("Between the lovers and small towns I fled/It's hard to think when you're driving fast"). Every distraction is a trap. A young girl who has catches his eye in a dive bar warns that "15 will get you 20 in Selena, Utah." Death haunts every corner of the song. A bartender has "a dead husband and another one on the way." The roadside graves along the highway become macabre mile markers. As much as they act to count the miles you've traveled, they're also your compass, pointing you in the direction you're heading.
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