From the Dallas Observer, April 11th, 1991
Music Awards
by Clay McNear
Course of Empire - Most improved (1990) Independent Release, Act Most Deserving
Of Major Label Support, Best Performance By A Local Act In 1990 (Course of Empire
release party at Trees, November 16). Male Vocalist (Vaughn Stevenson), Stevie
Ray Vaughn Memorial Guitarist Award (Mike Graff), Album Cover Art, Band Fliers,
Cover Song Rendition ("We Got The Beat" by the Go-Go's), "The Morrissey" Memorial
Dis' (Most Pretentiously Angst-Ridden).
It's apparent, in light of the plunder that Course of Empire reaped in this poll,
that this band is the new crowned king of Dallas music by both divine right and
default. With Fever in the Funkhouse voluntarily relinquishing the keys to the
kingdom, these mystical Merlins of industrial metal assumed the mantle.
But really, Course of Empire's newfound king-hell bosshood has much more to do
with divine right than default. COE is inarguably the local scene's hottest
number in terms of power and potential something reflected not only in the number
of awards the band racked up (10, with a significant second-place finish to Fever
in the Act Overall category), but in the sweeping range represented by those
awards.
There are two constraints that tend to deliver a band from the realm of mere
"good" ness unto "great" ness 1) artistic merit and 2) accessibility through
communicating your art to a lot of people who probably don't even like art at
least not mixed in with their rock 'n' roll). Number one is usually pointless
without number two, and vice versa.
Of late, COE, has nailed both of these factors square on the head, though the
advent of an audience for its art is a fairly recent development (and may
account for the Most Improved award). Unlike homegrown acts like Edie Brickell &
New Bohemians and Sara Hickman, which transcended early cult status to become
commercially viable national contenders - largely because they were commercially
viable in the first place - COE remains a "cult" act in both substance and style.
But it has become that oddest of oddities - a cult act with massive popular
appeal.- for two primary reason: the audience finally caught up with the band's
oblique future tense, and COE released its first album.
Course of Empire displays COE at its best - and worst. At its best, the band is
a roaring ball of fire, twisting fitfully in its own sobriety. The grinding
guitar work of Mike Graff and tom-tom crash of dual drummer Chad Lovell and
Anthony Headley provide a libidinous counterweight to vocalist Vaughn Stevenson's
ethereal shamanism. At its overwrought worst, COE richly deserves its "Morissey"
Memorial and its second-place finish to "Chate" himself (how poetic) in the
balloting for "The Jeff Liles" for Most Attitude.
But largely, COE manages to maintain a striking balance between the contradictory
calls of the wild and the sane, the nether reaches of the body and the high
plateau of the brain, achieving a swinging fusion of mood and mission on sublime
gutchecks like "Coming of the Century" and the spaghetti Southwestern "God's Jig."
How great their art. Let us bow before the new boss.
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