One Less Reason - The Memories Uninvited (2016)

Memphis is the birthplace of rock. And the best rock music, even music as hard as One Less Reason’s unique brand of literate, heartfelt hard rock, comes from the soul. That soul, as songwriter and front man Cris Brown will tell you, is the source of One Less Reason’s The Memories Uninvited.

The Memories Uninvited is the product of two years of work, during which time Brown also bought the former Kiva Recording Studio and House of Blues Studio on Rayner St. in Memphis—an address that’s now home to Tattooed Millionaire, the label Brown founded with John Falls in 2014. It’s been a period of change for Brown and company, which might be why the primary factor in making The Memories Uninvited has to do with the changes wrought by time. For the first time in his career, Brown wasn’t constrained by budgetary or studio concerns; he was able to demo the album’s songs more extensively, record them more painstakingly, and hone the arrangements until, as he says, when you hear The Memories Uninvited you’re hearing “exactly what I heard in my head.”

The result is an album that moves, song by song, from hard-hitting expressions of frustration and struggle to plaintive prayers for peace and reconciliation. Album opener “Break Me” and “On The Way Down” illustrate the former impulse, complete with shred-to-melodic-and-back vocal lines and sinister minor-key arrangements; the repeated refrain “You weren’t always like this” in “On The Way Down” somehow reaches both the anger and sorrow implicit in the song’s desperate performance.

Track List:
01. Break Me
02. Something Beautiful
03. Sometimes
04. Where Were You?
05. Time
06. The Trade
07. One Day
08. On the Way Down
09. The Lie
10. You Didn't Know
11. Rainmaker