Austin Chronicle

Andrew Duplantis & the Unfaithfuls

Colorblind (OJI)

Andrew Duplantis should know from intelligent roots rock; he plays bass in Son Volt. Colorblind, his second LP with the Unfaithfuls – so named, one imagines, because all six members are in too many other bands to list – works in similar tones, somber but never dour, adding deep shades of the many other groups crowding his résumé: Jon Dee Graham, Alejandro Escovedo, Tia Carrera. Some of its 10 songs bend the strings harder than others, but all express a common mood: the wayward soul by turns surprised and dismayed at his shortcomings but always honest about them. Duplantis doesn't quite approach Graham or Escovedo's plainspoken and often harsh truths, evincing a more ambivalent state of mind that catalogs popular terms for "crazy" with the same foreboding as inching his way through a breakup or likening loneliness to being underwater. As such, his found-love songs aren't much cheerier than their lost-love counterparts, but when paired with the Unfaithfuls' hand-in-glove arrangements – country-blues spare on "Nuts," Crazy Horse crunchy on "Underwater" – they provide the kind of comfort songwriters know will suffice when no warm embrace is at hand. - Chris Gray

St. Louis Riverfront Times

Andrew Duplantis
9 p.m. Monday, December 4. Off Broadway (3509 Lemp Avenue).
By Roy Kasten
Published: November 29, 2006

Austin bassist Andrew Duplantis (Son Volt and Jon Dee Graham) made an inauspicious St. Louis debut as a solo singer-songwriter at the well-intentioned but disappointing 2005 Mound City Music Festival. His new album with scruffy young band the Unfaithfuls, Colorblind, suggests the heyday of vaguely twangy Austin rockers the True Believers and Loose Diamonds, albeit augmented with synth whine and sub-Farrarian abstruseness. "Talking backwards, is it possible?" Duplantis, his voice buried in guitar noise, seems to sing. "All directions outside in mutilating any silence." Translation: He's still on the verge of a confident songwriting voice. But when he plugs into elemental power pop on "Next Question" and "Backpedaling," Duplantis sounds like he's moving forward, and ready to arrive.