Love for the Underdog

Album review

For his fourth album under his faux-band moniker, John Andrews & the Yawns, Quilt and Woods alumnus John Andrews continues in the direction of its predecessor, Cookbook (2021), which established a modest shift from ambling country-rock toward '70s soft rock. However, while Cookbook was, like his debut album, largely a solo effort (second album Bad Posture was recorded with then-housemates from bands including Mmoss and Soft Eyes), Love for the Underdog was tracked live to tape in various locales across New York state with his Cut Worms touring bandmates (Quilt's Keven Lareau, drummer Noah Bond, and Max Clarke himself). In a first for the Yawns, it also features a string quartet. A set of urban snapshots subtitled by reflections on the passage of time, everyday struggle, and touring life -- "Starving Artist" notes "Some days I'm well/Some days it's hell" -- at its best, Love for the Underdog offers Damien Jurado-like meditations on American working-class life in a landscape populated by drive-in theaters, neon signs, and phonebooks. The strings are conspicuous on poignant first track "Checks in the Mail" ("Everybody that I've ever loved/Tells me everything that they've dreamed of…Now all those dreams feel like dreams of mine/Maybe it's a sign that I love them still"). After the relatively brighter "Never Go Away" comes the album's cinematic centerpiece, the over-seven-minute "Fourth Wall," whose breezy narrative spends time on the town with "Judy" while noticing that, as the years pass, nothing stays the same. Its drowsy feel and rustling palette stay intact through closer "I Want to Believe," a swaying, Nilsson-esque waltz that holds onto hope despite knowing better, effectively capturing the spirit of the times.

© Marcy Donelson /TiVo