Brannen met singer and pianist Pap Shirock at another mutual friend’s party, and invited her to the studio. She brought to the proceedings her own unique talents as a former member of the international touring alt-rock band Shirock. Soon after, Jimbo Pap (an amalgam of the three core bandmates' names: Jim Bowers, Bo Brannen, and Pap Shirock) was born, the solo album transformed into a full-band project, and musicians Kip Boardman (bass) and Kaitlin Wolfberg (fiddle) came on board to round out both the recording and live show lineup.

For Jimbo Pap—whose members have all logged years on the road and/or in the music industry trenches—the LP’s cover image (Bowers’s great-grandmother pushing a shopping cart across a rocky desert landscape during the mid-‘80s) perfectly sums things up. ”It's a way for us to express gratitude," Bowers says of the album's title and cover. “We get used to life's setbacks; in fact we’ve come to expect them. We carry on, knowing that it could be so much worse.” The album was named by pianist Pap Shirock, winning an informal caption contest after seeing the proposed cover art. It Can Always Get Worse is a shining success of a debut offering, stacked with songs that transmit feelings of hopefulness and optimism, even inside admissions of loneliness. The goal all along had been to make a fun record, the kind of thing you’d put on during a long road trip with friends. The band immediately pokes fun at itself during "Submission (Nice Pants)," kicking off the entire album with the straight-faced delivery of "We put our pants on one leg at a time … just like every other fucker who wants to be Gram Parsons in Los Angeles.” The leadoff song’s lyrics have a way of musically “breaking the fourth wall“ and putting the listener on notice for what to expect throughout the rest of the album, and the second track departs sonically from its predecessor for more vintage country-western terrain. Elsewhere the ramshackle rock of ”Yard Sale" offers up another dose of the band’s characteristic brand of sly humor, of a type that would not be unfamiliar for fans of The Replacements, while songs like "Another Ticket on the Windshield,” “String of Pearls,” and ”Someone’s Gonna Love Me Again" find some beauty in urban desperation. 

It Can Always Get Worse is a record that could quietly insert itself into many listeners’ own association with feelings of hope and emotional fortitude, despite not exactly hitting one over the head with cloying appeals to the heartstrings. It’s a charmer that just might wind up being a big part of life’s latest soundtrack. Available in a limited single-disc gatefold sleeve vinyl LP edition with a digital download code, and on all major digital distribution platforms.