Autumn Island by The True Bugs

Every once in a while, I like to slip in an album review on this old blog. I’ve toyed with the idea of just having a review-only blog, but that’s another battle for another day. Anywho, I’ve been addicted to this album for the last week now, and it’s time to shine a light on a great album from 2007. I am speaking of Autumn Island, the swansong by The True Bugs. Let dissect…

The now defunct True Bugs have made a great rock record. The music grabs you from the get-go due to the immediacy of the songs coupled with supremely evocative lyrics. Mike Gervais has a great way of weaving little vignettes of heartbreak and resignation into beautiful self-contained universes full of political fire, social disillusionment, and an overwhelming adoration of the natural world.

The album is coming from a very specific corner of the post-“American Century” landscape. Anyone half-conscious of the current political climate who was born during the seventies or eighties will immediately latch on to the coming-of-age in modern America theme of the album. In less capable hands, this could have turned out to be a preachy mess. If you need a comparison, listen to early Springsteen or Mellencamp. Mike carves out the same territory by making intensely personal and detailed observations from the point of view of very real characters who inhabit his 3 minute slices of life. The power of all three as songwriters is that they bring you directly into the lives that they are examining without pretense or judgment.

The lyrics are dense and beautiful. Here are some random lines from the record (as best as I can transcribe…) I’ll arrange them as sentences, because they sound as if they should be in the middle of a novel.

Cars drive by on a tandem-highway. Paul and I work on my bike in the driveway
‘til Diane says “come in I made some dinner darling.”

Spiced tea steeped in its cup on the table. Sirens scream out a warning as flashes burn and as ashes fall on land that’s known a thousand fathers.

Silently she wipes the grease off of the cutting board, smiling as she’s dying for another hour more.

Drops cling to drops as the air begins cooling and fall through the mid-Autumn sky.

Open the door - handle creaks as it turns - to newspaper smell and dry eyes.

And no, he’s not coming back again, letters can’t bring a reply. Desert sand drains his memory, staining rocks red as they dry.

Cracked into wakefulness - coffee and corridors -the river is rusty today.


See what I mean? The man is no slouch when it comes to filling his songs with visceral details.

All this talk of the lyrics doesn’t mean that musically there is something lacking. The album straddles the territory of Neil Young and ‘90s rock. Fans of Wilco (the “real” Wilco, of AM/Being There/ Summerteeth fame) will feel right at home. It’s all very competent sounding, with great little flourishes here and there. One of my favorite tunes on the record is “Morning After”. It’s all very carnival-esque with flashes of Dark Side of the Moon-like saxophone in the opening. Much like other songs on the record, it’s a twist on familiar conventions of rock and roll. There’s enough to feel comfortable about in the music, but there’s always a bit of something extra thrown in. “Morning After” falls into a very slow blue-beat feel at times before shifting back into gorgeously slow guitar passages. Many a modern band could learn more about playing with slow intensity by listening to this record than thousands of others. Not for one second is any of the power or passion lost because people aren’t screaming and playing at breakneck speeds.

Overall, there’s not much to dislike about this record. In fact, it’s damn fine. It’s a very smart album without being too clever. In a strange sort of way, I would love to sit down with the Bush administration and throw this record on. I think that it would be a very revealing picture of where we are as a result of their policies and practices. Yeah, it really is that political in its undertones, but as I said before, in less capable hands, it could have been too preachy. What we’re left with is a fantastic snapshot of one writers take on modern America.