Early press reaction to Queen Mary Press:
"Let’s not beat around the bush, Queen Mary Trash is as good a double album I’ve heard for many a long year, and it has much in common with many other classics of the form. The strength of DeCroo’s songs bring to mind Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde, the frayed groove and liberation hints at the Stones’ Exile On Main Street and the have-a-go approach to new sounds and styles mirrors The Clash’s London Calling. What’s more,
it works beautifully as a double album. I’ve been living with Queen Mary Trash now for ten days or so, and each disc is getting played. Real thought has gone into the sequencing and structure. There’s no trail off and no filler. If you only buy one double album this decade, make sure it is this one."
-Leicester Bangs/ UK
"Rodney DeCroo's 2005 live record, War Torn Man, was an instant classic, and it was only his second release. He followed with 2008's quietly effective Mockingbird Bible, which dropped the widescreen country rockers, but made for great company during midnight bouts of narcotic depression. On his latest, the Vancouver, BC-based singer-songwriter migrates between both poles, covering all points in between across a sprawling, inspired double album. Canada certainly has bigger roots stars, but none who write as vividly and affectingly about the road back from hell. "You ain't Steve Earle, You ain't Neil Young, you ain't Bob Dylan," he sings in "You Ain't No One. But he is Rodney DeCroo, which is really starting to count for something."
-Exclaim Magazine
"You ain't Steve Earle, you ain't Neil Young, you ain't Bob Dylan," sings a self-deprecating DeCroo. Coulda fooled me. The Vancouver troubadour has Zimmy's nasal whine, Earle's orneriness and Shakey's ability to sound equally at home with an acoustic or a fuzzy electric -- and he puts 'em all to use here on 24 straight shots of rootsy honesty. Whoever he is, he's worth knowing."
-Toronto Sun
"Queen Mary Trash, a heartbreakingly beautiful—and totally rockin’—double CD that will blow you away"
-Georgia Straight
"Rodney DeCroo's Queen Mary Trash is a real treasure. Vancouver roots singer-songwriter releases sprawling, raw double-album. Queen Mary Trash is a beast of an album: 24 songs recorded in just five days, splayed out over two CDs totalling over 90 minutes of music, and without a single "dud" of a track to be found."
-Vancouver Sun
"Queen Mary Trash showcases songwriting that Steve Earle,
John Fogerty or Son Volt would envy."
-Prairie Dog
"A clean and sober DeCroo has just released his fifth record, Queen Mary Trash. It's a classic double album -- two discs, 24 songs, and there isn't a boring second on it. This city is lousy with alt-country and roots artists, but if I was gonna lay money on who was in for the long haul, DeCroo would be my guy. "I'm a lifer," he once said to me. He can't really do anything else. He's Vancouver's own Piss Pissedofferson -- a songwriter in the classic American outlaw mold who can somehow transmute rough beauty from the hell he perceives both inside and out. DeCroo's a poet and there's a force to his words even when they collude to keep you in the dark. DeCroo has a masterful way of creating tension that suddenly gives way to a yawning, wide open bridge or chorus, as if the clouds break and the sunlight is rushing in. It's where the humanity tends to reside in his songs. It might be DeCroo's single greatest achievement yet."
-The Tyee
"It’s refreshing to be listening to music that comes from the gut and sticks to the guts like glue.
Rodney Decroo has been airing out and exercising musically some real gritty ghosts these past few years, and with each release, he solidifies himself as one of Vancouver’s more accomplished songwriters. The music he writes comes from experience. There are no tall tales told or odes to the latest dance club hits accentuated with lasers and hot keyboard strikes in this body of work.
Queen Mary Trash is Decroo’s fourth album and probably his best yet. Beauty and venom co-mingle nicely over 90 minutes and there is barely a dull moment to be had. With 24 songs, this album is a lot to digest, but like a good gripping novel, digesting this music is a fantastic way to spend your time."
-Discorder Magazine
"DeCroo has a distinctive voice and a knack for writing
really dark, authentic, rock edged country music
about tormented travelers along life’s long road . the whole thing is something you just want to hear over and over again because you always seem to catch something new like clever lyric, a musical hit or organ
in the background."
-LA Beat
"DeCroo definitely has a penchant for going places where most mortals dare not tread. Far from grossly inappropriate, though, DeCroo's utterances tend more towards the darkly self-deprecating, exposing those little nooks and crannies of self-doubt or worry that most people try to swallow and forget with the morning coffee (or a late-night beer). His latest album, the double-disc Queen Mary Trash, is infused with a certain kind of down-on-yourself charm, a spirit of crooked-smiled acceptance of all-too-present faults, captured perfectly."
-Vue Weekly
"And while the double album is an always overwhelming undertaking in so far as keeping the listener engaged with relevant material (honestly, how many different songs can most artists write?) DeCroo and company keep it swinging right through disc two with near-psychedelic country frenzy, though always holding back just enough, keeping the lyrical craft in the forefront. It's a fine collection. In a dustbowl of a creative era when Hollywood remakes classics and cookie cutter "songwriters" are smug and/or ignorant enough to cover untouchable songs, it is refreshing to see an artist inspired to be so prolific."
-BC Musician
"On his latest album, Queen Mary Trash (an ambitious double record spanning over 90 minutes in length), DeCroo displays the grit and muscle one would expect from someone who’s seen the shittier side of life. The Vancouver based musician has certainly established himself."
-Planet S
".the discs reverberate with a warm, natural and authentic feel.
Again, it’s that refreshing sense of honesty that also makes DeCroo
such an engaging artist and person."
-Red Deer Express
"Originally from Pittsburgh, DeCroo came to Canada as a child after his father decided not to "re-up" for a second tour of duty in Vietnam. DeCroo dedicated his gritty, emotionally charged 2006 album War Torn Man to him, and two years later released another batch of unpolished country rock gems in the form of Mockingbird Bible, drawing comparisons to Bob Dylan, Steve Earle and John Prine. DeCroo's latest is an equally impressive 24-song double album called Queen Mary Trash."
- The Courier
"DeCroo has a way of starting his songs quietly, just him on the acoustic
guitar, then letting his excellent band in bit by bit to crank up the
intensity as he howls in Minotaur, "I'm your monster,". DeCroo has a distinct
feel for his characters, the denizens of Van City, slushy Montreal and the
Underground. DeCroo gives them all a thrash on Queen Mary Trash."
-Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
