Pat McGee returns to roots

The Pat McGee Band’s fourth album, Save Me, is a landmark album of sorts for both the band and its fans. As the band’s first release with Kirtland Records, it marks a sort of return to the band’s roots as an independent act. However, it shows the kind of growth that might be expected from a band that has been making music for nearly 10 years.

Save Me is the kind of record that you can listen to from start to finish without wanting to skip tracks that either aren’t as good as the rest or that don’t really fit with the feel of the rest of the album. Every song is solid and the tracks are ordered in such a way that you don’t feel like you’re being jerked around in some sort of musical identity crisis.

There are a number of tracks that stand out among the rest, however. “Beautiful Ways,” the first song on the album, provides a wonderful preview to the tone of the rest of the album and serves to draw the listener in with a driving, syncopated rhythm that compliments the somewhat melancholy mood that the lyrics would otherwise create if paired with some other sort of backing. The same could be said of many of the songs on this record, which is why “Beautiful Ways” is such a good introductory song.

“Must Have Been Love” was released as a single off of this album, and while it, along with most of the other songs on the album, is radio-worthy, it perhaps was not the best choice to represent the whole record. “Annabel” is quite possibly the catchiest song on the record and the catchiest song I’ve heard in awhile. At the band’s live shows, this song is always a crowd favorite with a refrain that lends itself to crowd participation and compulsive singing along.

Speaking of Pat McGee Band’s live performances, they are by far the best way to experience the band’s music. Before listening to Save Me, the only times I have heard this band’s music were at live shows, often where they were playing with some other band that I had gone to see. Fans of the Goo Goo Dolls may recall seeing the Pat McGee Band at On the Bricks several years ago when they opened for the Goos—I recall a very positive reaction from the crowd at that show as well as from the crowds at the other shows where I have seen them. Pat McGee Band is certainly one of those bands that better expresses itself on stage than in the studio.

But in lieu of toting PMB around in a concert venue, Save Me serves as a sufficient portable substitute to hold over fans until the next time the band plays in Atlanta.