My Son’s Home is our third full-length record. It was conceived of as an album about soldiers and their complicated struggles to forge identities and relationships in times of war. The idea was inspired by the Bobby Bond song “Six White Horses” and a short John Steinbeck novel entitled The Moon is Down (which we recently learned was also the basis for the film Red Dawn). Other subjects emerged during the writing sessions, and the record slowly evolved into an eighteen-song cycle about the lives of individuals, families, and friends in a variety of familiar settings: the homestead, the battlefield, the country and the city.
The album is populated by familiar faces from American folk and rock songs, ranging from the back-story told in our “Ruby” of the embittered Korean War vet who vows to shoot his wife in Mel Tillis’s “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town”, to the Aesop-like fable of “The Snake and How It Lost It’s Legs”, in which Dear Henry and Dear Liza from the children’s folk song “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” are responsible for the snake’s brutal dismemberment. There are cops and spiders lurking in the cigarette trees from “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”, and Johnny B. Goode faces a flurry of nightsticks, bringing him back down to his knees.
- 1. Far and Wide | Listen
- 2. My Father Sat Me Down
- 3. Valley
- 4. Ruby | Listen
- 5. Wooden Walls
- 6. Lift up the Gate
- 7. To the Sea
- 8. Anthony’s Gate
- 9. God Touched Me
- 10. I Carried Myself
- 11. The Snake and How It Lost It’s Legs
- 12. Where the Water Flows
- 13. My Son’s Home
- 14. Black Wind
- 15. Take A Train
- 16. For the Light of the Homes
- 17. Dirty Work
- 18. Work Itself Out
"Performed with an uncommonly deft touch and subtle grace."
- Pitchfork - 7.5
"Any fan of good Americana music should keep an eye out for My Son's Home. It will undoubtedly be a highlight of 2009."
- Pop Headwound
"Metuchen, New Jersey ex-patriots Roadside Graves are following up 2007's great (and greatly underappreciated) No One Will Know Where You've Been with the epic, amazing 18-track My Son's Home. It has narrative substance (like a door stopper-sized book) and just as many hooks, tons of heart. Or, in other words, and to carry the book metaphor way too far, this one's going to make a lot of noise when it drops. Lyricist/vocalist John Gleason pens some of the prettiest and smartest lyrics this side of Matt Berninger (The National)."
- Stereogum
"Perfectly illustrated stories, captured in song, that will make you laugh, cry, and want to drink one more than you probably should."
- Muzzle of Bees
"The bands synthesis of shuffling guitars, robust harmonies, and instrumental flourishes nod to artists like Dylan, Springsteen, and the Band, while retaining a free and fresh spirit simultaneously possess melodic shine and raucous energy."
- popmatters.com
"...the Graves build their songs layer by layer, adding stinging guitar lines over strummed acoustics and boozy horns with barreling piano runs until the entire seven-piece band is dancing a country waltz in perfect step. By the time they run through the proggy Civil War march and barroom piano rolls of "Ruby," the EP's opener, you've been through at least five genres and a hundred years of musical history, and it all feels as seamless as the march of time itself."
- aquariumdrunkard.com
