Looking For The Good Land The Cerny Brothers coming May 3

Pre-order record here: https://orcd.co/cernybroslftgl 

When folk music, country, blues and garage rock come together and let the chaos of their differences reign supreme, the resulting product sounds something like Looking for the Good Land, the all new full length album from Tennessee indie duo The Cerny Brothers. As their name suggests, The Cerny Brothers consist of two siblings who play a humble, earthy variety of alternative rock that has more in common with Drive-By Truckers than it does Nirvana, and their all-American sound has been turning a lot of heads recently. Rolling Stone just touted them as the Americana Artist To Know. If you haven’t heard their music yet, Looking for the Good Land is an excellent foray into their illustrious persona, which is as simple in tone as it is sophisticated in style.

The Cerny Brothers have a very structured sound, but I wouldn’t call their music formulaic. If it were, songs like “Ghost,” “Where I’m Going,” “Laugh at the Devil” and “Denver” wouldn’t end up on the same release – they would be scattered across a myriad of double sided singles and EPs that wouldn’t provoke enough attention to be reviewed by the mainstream music press. Instead their sound is a multidimensional juggernaut that incorporates so many different themes and contextual influences that some casual listeners might get a little disoriented when cherry picking the band’s discography for hits. 

The cerebral folk rock of “Moon Above the Desert” goes a long way towards shutting down anyone who might have suggested that The Cerny Brothers have an issue with timing in their work, churning us in a calculated arrangement that would almost be avant-garde if it weren’t reined in by the surreal vocals of its singer Bob Cerny. Looking for the Good Land is laid out in such a tension building way that when listened to as a singular piece of music is feels somewhat conceptual and cohesive in narrative. If The Cernys were to put together their own southern version of a rock opera I would probably review it just out of curiosity, and the mood of this record tells me they could likely do it without having to augment their sound too much.

The future looks very bright for The Cerny Brothers as the 2020s approach, and I think that while Looking for the Good Land is still a defiantly sharp independent release their sound is slowly but surely streamlining and becoming something that moderate alternative fans will gravitate towards. Thanks to advancements in technology and social media their music is venturing to corners of the world that their predecessors could have only dreamed of reaching, and the legacy that their artistry ultimately yields will be determined not just by its impact domestically but abroad as well. This has been a pretty good time for alt country acts of their variety, and a record as effectual as this one is bound to find its target audience in this vastly expanding market.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/track/0Wg6sUcTnA0UKjTqm99Rvr

Michael Rand