Blanche - What This Town Needs (Ep) (CD)

All Music Guide

While marking time before the release of their second fulllength album (slated to hit the streets in early 2007), Detroit's countryflavored gothictinged artrockers Blanche have released a fivesong EP, What This Town Needs, which suggests the group's second LP should be just as strong (if not more so) than their debut. The disc leads off with two songs slated for Album Number Two, a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Child of the Moon" and the title cut, and both are fine stuff "What This Town Needs" is as close to a straightforward rocker as this band gets, powered with booming drums and fuzzy swells from Dave Feeny's pedal steel, but the lyrical tug of war between Dan John Miller and Tracee Mae Miller shows Blanche are still in touch with their dark and nervous side, and the Stones cover is a beautifully ethereal melding of mandolin and pedal steel. While "Scar Beneath the Skin" and the basement demo for "Never Again" are more in the vein of If We Can't Trust the Doctors' dark and lovely ...mindset, they also suggest this band is continuing to grow in pleasing ways, and two powerful live tunes round out the package a version of "Someday..." recorded in the Netherlands, and a Quicktime file of the band onstage in Chicago playing "So Long Cruel World." What This Town Needs is a solid holding action while Blanche readies their second album, and a compelling set of music in its own right. - Mark Deming, All Music Guide Read more Less