![]() ![]() ![]() And that other little old band from Texas might have some competition for who is the best of the two. If I am wearing a Whiskey Myers shirt today, then yesterday I was clad in a ZZ Top top. It’s just on “Tornillo” (translated as “Screw” in Spanish) they just decided to nail working class, blue collar rock n roll. It’s proof that Whiskey Myers could have been anything they wanted to be. I’d listened to “Other Side” about 10 times before I realised that it had the same kind of driving energy as “Rockin’ In The Free World” and if there’s been a sort of gospel undercurrent throughout, almost (the backing vocals from the McCary Sisters kind of help), then the fragile, brilliant and raw ballad “Heart Of Stone” brings it to the forefront. Both sides suit them, and when they go for something else entirely – an acoustic based ballad “Heavy On Me” – you realise just how good they are. “Mission To Mars” could have a hoedown in the honky-tonk, and “Bad Medicine” (you have no idea how much I wanted a Bon Jovi cover when I scanned the tracklist!) could be a lost CCR song. This is Springsteen’s “Nebraska” with bombast. ![]() “These things that I done, I done to feed my family” offers the words matter-of-factly. There isn’t apple pie cooling on these window sills, and if there was these boys in these songs are stealing it. ![]() The characters in these songs (and its tempting to imagine this as the kind of anti cookie-cutter, Hallmark sound of those country albums) get their hands dirty. Eric Church has a gold disc if he covers this. The working class couple who have grown apart and stay together for the sake of the children have their anthem. It’s the sort of thing you wished Drive By Truckers had done on their patchy recent one. “I am for the old time country, I am for the blue collar man” offers Cannon here, and if this wasn’t recorded in Muscle Shoals then it wants to be and as an example of the extremes of Whiskey offer, then “Whole World Gone Crazy” is your biggest signpost. The horn section is to the fore throughout. John Jeffries’ guitar has never quite rang with this type of shotgun blast before. It’s not just lyrically that they’ve never been heavier. “Mama don’t cry when Daddy’s gone” he spits, as he puts himself into a broken home. Cody Cannon has never seethed with rage like this. Funky, proper rock n roll, horn sections to make Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes blush. “Watching the world go up in flames” goes the last line in the chorus, yet it seems happy about it. Yes this was the same Whiskey Myers (still a six piece since Tony Kent joined in 2017) but it was a harder, angrier one. The first single, “John Wayne” sort of alluded to it. Basically I gave “Mud” ten, and decided that 2019’s “Whiskey Myers” was better still. They are, to this day the only band who has ever scored an 11/10 on a review on MV too. So me and the Texans go back a way, in fairness. I am sitting typing this in one of Whiskey Myers’ t-shirts. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |