Paw Death To Traitors Double LP A&M 1995

Paw Death To Traitors Double LP Promo Copy
A&M Records
CAT# 69712 4070 1995

Paw is destined to become a sought after grunge band.  Give it another few years, about the time when everybody starts remembering how "great" the 90's were.  When people start wearing flannels and combat boots to the 90's themed office party and talking about how much they loved JNCO jeans.  At that point, Lawrence, Kansas' Paw will garnish the type of attention they always deserved.  Collectors will focus on grunge and punch themselves in the face when they realize they could have listened to this back in the day rather than Bush.

Honestly, though, I'm not too sure Paw really wanted to be a grunge band.  You listen to Dragline and hear a song like 'Jessie' and it's clearly grunge, but I've always wondered how much of that was forced by being on a major label.  It's almost as if their hand was forced on Dragline to be Nirvana from a Cowtown.

I did enjoy Dragline, but to me, Death to Traitors feels a bit more honest.  The grunge with a "twang" isn't completely abandoned, you'll hear it on the first song.  But, this album gets a lot more melody and harmonies, less screaming and more musicianship.  Melody and musicianship have always been more a part of Kansas music than "twang", anyways.  We're much more roots rock than we are country.

And back to my original point, someday Paw is going to be highly sought after by collectors.  They'll be Grunge compilation albums and some of them will feature tunes like 'Death to Traitors' and 'Hope I Die Tonight'.  They're going to search out this album and discover it's softer side with songs like 'Texas' and 'Last One', then they will throw away their Sponge and Stone Temple Pilots CDs.  This is better.

Lawrence, KS It's not just grunge

Death to Traitors