SAY ZUZU : TAKE THESE TURNS

1. The Farm
2. 14 Other Ways
3. Hard Line
4. Take These Turns
5. My My My
6. This Town
7. Don't Tie Me Down
8. Like Mama Said
9. Nickle Store Stomp
10. The Twine Song
11. Dead Dog
12. Chamberlain's Guard
13. Broken
14. 706 Union

Label : Say Zuzu

Release Date : 1997

Length : 52:44

Review (AllMusic) : This album, while catching Say Zuzu at a relatively early point in their recording career, is a solid collection of alt-country tempered with rock guitar grit (à la early Son Volt). The approach here isn't as varied as later efforts -- and there aren't any of the burnished acoustic gems that round out such later efforts as Bull and Every Mile. Nevertheless, Say Zuzu's strong songwriting is already evident, and this album is a combination of rock muscle and bright melodic turns. Say Zuzu is something of a curiosity, emerging from the wilds of New Hampshire with an alt-country vision as strong as predecessors such as Whiskeytown already intact, and this album shows that the group has been strong from the outset. Highlights include the title track and "14 Other Ways."

Review (No Depression) : Enter the suburbs of any city in America lacking mountains or a waterfront, and you could be anywhere: a McDonald’s here, a strip mall there, clusters of nearly identical houses. It’s easy to lose your bearings. And so it goes with the development of alt-country. As the number of artists grows, so will the number that fall by the wayside in a homogeneous heap. New Hampshire band Say ZuZu, who call themselves insurgent country, could well be one of those casualties. Their self-produced release, Take These Turns, offers a few bright spots, but most of the songs find themselves in a suburban identity crisis that is hardly insurgent. More than half of the disc’s 14 songs come across like any country-rock single on a Nashville Network video. However, Say ZuZu doesn’t spend the whole 53 minutes in the suburbs. Jon Nolan and Cliff Murphy have enviable voices that harmonize seamlessly. They also share guitar and songwriting duties, and there is some good writing here, including “The Twine Song”, a fast bluegrass shuffle brimming with Murphy’s banjo and catchy mile-a-minute lines such as “nothin’ says twang like a little bit a twine.” Another standout is “Chamberlain’s Guard”, the story of an 18-year-old Yankee having second thoughts about heading off to Dixie to battle after witnessing the condition of those returning. Steve Ruhm’s straight-out-of-the-1860s snare sets the mood as Nolan’s gentle mandolin pluckings drift gently, then build to a decision-making climax. But the focus of many of the songs is diluted with Southern-rock guitar solos, hippie groove overtones and verses repeated one more time to fill up the three minutes. Say ZuZu is a band with promise; what they need is a sense of direction.

Review (Bandcamp) : “Out of all the Say ZuZu back catalog, Take These Turns was the record with the shortest gestation period,” the band explains. “The resulting sound is us feeling brash and emboldened by our leap into the life of a touring rock band.” “For the entirety of the two weeks it took to record and mix this record in Franklin, Tennessee, we were sleeping on our school bus (“The Bull”) in a WalMart parking lot, cooking on a camp stove, and soaking up the sounds of session players ripping it up at Robert’s Western World on Lower Broad in Nashville. It wasn’t pretty, but we still saw the road as an exciting destination. Take These Turns is the sound of movement, the sound of our band’s musical adolescence, and the sound of a band in tune with the pavement humming beneath its wheels."