Blanche If We Can't Trust The Doctors...

I'm sure that for most of you out there, even those that have been living under a rock somewhere in Wiltshire for the past four months, have heard of Blanche. For it was Blanche who were the soundtrack to an incident in Detroit last year that lead to Jason Stollsteimer of The Von Bondies having his face 'Self-Defended' to a pulp by a certain Mr Jack White; an incident that not only started what could be described as The Great Detroit Garage War (© Me Just now), but an incident that left us all wondering above all just who the hell Blanche were. That is until now...

To describe Blanche as "A little bit strange" would be an understatement much akin to describing Rage Against The Machine as "A bit Miffed", and the Strereophonics as "A tad pedestrian". For Blanche deal in the kind of gothic Americana that is (thankfully) a world away from the mundane riffing of many of their motor city contemporaries. Lyrically, If We can't Trust The Doctors... seems to be drawing from a rich vein of suffering, which is not surprising seeing as various members of the band had to arrange three separate funerals during the making of this record. In the world of Blanche, the sick rarely get better ('If we can't trust the doctors and our prayers have fallen flat/And that 14 pills she takes each day won't hold the sickness back' - Superstition) and the path to true love is clearly strewn with emotional debris ('Now the lilacs lost it's fragrance/And the soil has turned to dust' - Do You Trust Me?); the kind of subject matter which, in most cases, have me reaching for the bleach and a box of razorblades. But the bleakness of the lyrics only serve to enhance the effect of the music. Slide guitars weep gently over strummed acoustic guitars to create a dense, swampy but above all welcoming sound that threatens to swallow you up if you go in too deep. This is not Detroit music; this is David Lynch directing Oh Brother, Where art thou?. Sure, any album by a Detroit band wouldn't be complete unless a couple of their peers made appearances on it (Jack White pops up with a guitar solo on the Brendan Benson produced Who's To Say), but it is both a credit to Daniel John Miller and his band that If We Can't Trust The Doctors not only strays from his more conservative peers by making an album full of music so dark and beguiling that it invites you to get lost within it's warm, almost suffocating charms.

If We Can't Trust The Doctors is not the sound of a band that have three chords but only one idea. It is an assured collection of dark, brooding yet ultimately very warm songs that manage to tug at the heartstrings like a pair of cement shoes whilst retaining a wry sense of gallows humour throughout. And there's not a leather jacket or a pair of shades in sight. Oh, Happy days...