Westword - Wrap It Up
Harvesting a summer crop of local releases

Fort Collin's infamous Blasting Room studio (launching pad for much of the recorded output of Owned & Operated Records and its offshoot, Upland) is the physical source of this collection, ten recordings committed to tape between 1996 and 1997. But it is the creative symbiosis between Drag the River's Chad Price and Jon Snodgrass (also of Armchair Martian) that drives these singles; Hobo's finds the pair confidently wrangling with an earnest, back-roads sound that recalls fashionable country revisionists such as Son Volt and the Bottle Rockets, as well as Neil Young in quieter moments ("Back to God") and story-mode Springsteen ("Bug Country"). A cast of able characters - including pedal-steel player Zach Boddicker and "Little Chad-drexx," who fills in with some down-home mandolin stylings on three tracks - helps make it clear that the River-draggers have come to play, and adapt, a song-driven form of country music rather than merely evoke some of the genre's mechanisms for ironic or tokenistic purposes. This is a solid, sometimes gut wrenching, sometimes carefree release from a fine group of hoboes.

-Laura Bond