“I see a place where the fire is burning/In my mind, the wheels keep turning,” sings Halfway’s Chris Dale on his band’s sophomore album Remember The River. Like Springsteen, who believed that hope was a place you could drive to, Dale believes in the myth of the highway and that if you drive long enough, and far enough, there’s a good chance you’ll find it. Taking their cue from Gram Parsons, The Byrds and The Band, Brisbane, Australia’s Halfway play the kind of roots rock that lasts. Sharing vocal duties with guitarist John Busby, Dale and his bandmate soar through numbers like the Jayhawks-influenced, “River Roads,” the crushing country ballad “Factory Floor” and the banjo-driven “Chance” with seamless vocal harmonies. But this is by no means a two-man affair; with a seven-member personnel, Halfway manages a rich bed of instrumentation—the organ fills roll, the pedal steel lilts—making each number a stunning blast of lush roots rock. Elsewhere, “Dean & The Fitzroy” suggests The Bodeans; “Cherri Ann” wobbles with heartbreak; and the spare album closer “Edge Of The Peer” is a haunting meditation on mortality.
--Alex Green
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