The new sophomore release from local Chicago rocker, Gary Camaro sounds more like a travelogue than a rock & roll record. Though, it does rock pretty hard with loud echoes of escapism & romantic notions envisioned from sonic murals of the American Southwest.
The opening riff of “Down To The Wire” moves like the official pace car of the album as Camaro wears his love of that Keith Richards open G tuning on his sleeve like a badge of honor. This IS rock & roll. And in the direction of travel, doors open on the right at Rock & Roll. Then, the green flag flies & the sound shifts into high gear as the pedal hits the metal on “Down The Highway” & the speakers roar out a mixture of burning rubber & fury. This song incinerates right out of the gate with blistering guitars & screaming beatitude.
And that highway departs, from the abhorrence of Chicago, Illinois to the O’Keefe landscapes of New Mexico in “Wild Onion Exodus”. This song is Americana at its finest, packed tight with rollicking honky tonk piano strides & a pure southern fried fiddle that serenades over lyrical scenes of a land ever so enchanted, before leading the listener back to Chicago’s Northside for another fiddle induced country lament of the everlasting love in “Oh, Rosemarie!”.
The Dylan-esque sounds of “The Last Train Out Of San Miguel de Allende” is a poetic jangle that journeys south of the Rio Grande in tribute to Neal Cassidy, the great hero of the Beat Generation, his counterculture ways & the last place anyone ever saw him alive. As the record shifts back to the more pop rock flavor of “The Ballad Of Lily Flowers” it becomes highway bound, once again, with hitchhiking lycanthropy in “Werewolf Ryder Blues” as the verses flow with gritty B3 organ heavy utopian desert panoramas & a haunting howl of the Clair de Lune.
Bringing this record to a close is the penultimate song “Mr. Jailer Man” that hears a sentenced man’s begging pleas of western redemption, as the pedal steel cries, before that long climb to the gallows, only to jailbreak those chains into the heavy riff rock, grand finale of “The (Not-So) Great Escape” that sees our hero, once again, guitar solos blasting, on down that lonesome highway, into an anti-social, misanthropic & very bitter sunset.
With an album so full of emotional piss & vinegar with heavy Americana guitar riffs that nod to the influences of Izzy Stradlin, Son Volt, Jack Kerouac, The Georgia Satellites, Gram Parsons, The Dogs D’Amour, Flies On Fire, Bob Dylan & The Rolling Stones…Gary Camaro has crossed the finish line & captured the checkered flag of Rock & Roll.
“In The Direction Of Travel” is not an album. It’s a victory lap.