Fresh Blood, seven new tracks, is the fourth album from McCarthy Trenching out of Omaha, Nebraska. The new jams take up and elaborate on themes and theories from the Trench’s three earlier outings Old Habits (2006) McCarthy Trenching (2007) and Calamity Drenching (2008). Singer-writer-frontman Dan McCarthy is back on keys and guitar, with some old ghosts hanging in the room and some new talent covering his back.
The bar stays put this time, but people tend to want to move. So when you see her off to California, a waltz is a good way to do it. It sounds like coming home, and maybe after a while out there she will. At least she won’t forget what it sounds like. Not every love song is happy, though. The surprise is some of the saddest of all don’t even have anything to do with you. It’s just the neighbors breaking up, and you always let each other be. Still there’s something about seeing somebody leave someone alone. And a life always looks small when it’s in a pile in the yard.
No matter. The Trench is on the road too, all 15 of them, and the miles going by seems like as good a time as any to revisit some of those old friends of the mind, desire and regret. Some women you just can’t apologize to, starting with your mother, no matter what Yeats said. Others you give it a crack. Like by laying pen to paper and getting off a real humdinger of a love letter, one that ups the ante on all those ‘I’m gonna love you forever’ yahoos (you didn’t know the Trench did thrash!).
There’s a friend in here you can count on (even if you did give up doin’ math). The Almighty Himself passes through. A brief interlude with a motorized man. Catfish, not the pitcher. Nothing tastes quite as good as being drunk feels. Most of the time you can wash it down and keep going. Fresh blood. You hope you have it, you’re willing to give it, you try not to draw it.
In the end, Philip Larkin drops by. He’s still a librarian. He still wears a tie to work. He still wears Buddy Holly glasses and is pissed he was born too early for the pill. You gotta love a man who knows what he wants’and can put his finger on what, in life, is wanting. He’s really not asking for all that much.

-Tom McCarthy, June 2011