Larry and His Flask offers a musical ‘Remedy’

Published 12:00 am Thursday, October 18, 2018

Long-running Bend band Larry and His Flask may have just released its definitive statement with “This Remedy,” its first album in five years and first since returning from a brief hiatus in 2014 and 2015. All that time away seems to have energized the now-five-piece in more ways than one: The songwriting is sharper than ever, as are the harmonies, while the energy level never lets up, even on the slower numbers.

In an interview late last year with GO! Magazine, frontman and guitarist Ian Cook described 2013’s “By the Lamplight” as “us trying to fit all of our interests into one album”; that record’s darker detours didn’t connect with audiences the way the band had hoped. While the group does chase plenty of new threads on “This Remedy” — slower songs such as “Hoping Again” and “The Place That it Belongs” recall side-project Woebegone, while “Begin Again” swings like a tune from bassist Jeshua Marshall’s Hot Club of Bend or Guardian of the Underdog — here it all makes sense integrated into the joyous bigger picture. No one will mistake any of these songs for anyone other than Larry and His Flask, and that’s half the album’s triumph.

The other half is that the songs are just that damn good. The title track, which made its live debut this summer when Cook performed it for GO! Magazine’s Anatomy of a Song series, is an instant classic, marrying the rich harmonies and drama of Bad Religion’s best songs to a swirling soundscape of guitars, banjos, mandolins and horns (check your pulse if that slow-build intro doesn’t give you goosebumps). “Dearly Departed” and opener “Atonement” are classic Larry songs, with fast-picked acoustic instruments riding drummer Jamin Marshall’s galloping rhythms. “Behind the Curtain” is a highlight, with an epic structure and touches of flamenco-inspired guitar playing.

Larry and His Flask is on tour in support of the album, but the band will be back home for its annual New Years Eve bash at the Domino Room.

— By Brian McElhiney

The Bulletin