The Rosewood Thieves: From the Decker House EP Review

I reviewed this CD nearly two years ago on another blog and am planning on writing a review for their follow up EP tomorrow. In the meantime, here is a review of their fantastic debut.

While surfing the Internet I randomly stumbled across this band and heard very positive reviews. I decided to listen to one of their songs “Lose Angeles”, and from the first twenty seconds of the song, the only thing I knew I had to do was to grab this album fast. The song is incredibly catchy and has that folk rock attitude that is missing from popular music. Singer Erik Jordan sounds more like John Lennon than Lennon himself, at times it is actually eerie how similar the vocals are. The thing that The Rosewood Thieves bring to the table and execute perfectly on, is simplicity.

The Thieves’ simple melodic song structure continues song after song and gives the album a really intimate feel. To add to the intimacy, the personal lyrics projecting love and heartbreak only build on top of the musical closeness. The beautiful sound The Thieves purvey seems to come so easy, never reaching out too far and never sounding too pretentious. On “Back Home to Harlem” many bands would make the mistake to add screaming vocals and depressing melodies to capture the heartbreaking lyrics. Instead The Rosewood Thieves keep the equation simple; keeping a solid melody that is both catchy and unique and letting the words to the talking opposed to the voice propelling them.

The Rosewood Thieves have a very refreshing sound, bringing back the great era of Folk Rock. The album sounds like the “Bringing It Back Home” days of Dylan; they don’t go for pure folk and at the same time they don’t stray away from it. The song “Doctor” sounds just like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with very reminiscent guitar licks and instrumentation.

The Rosewood Thieves look like a band displaying heavy potential considering the songs on this CD were written when Erik Jordan was only twenty years old. For a debut The Rosewood Thieves are showing a lot of promise, but then again we’ve seen a lot of really quality debut albums.

Grade: B+