Alabama Ass Whuppin

Album review

A live recording featuring a great collection of punk-based country rock. This is some stomping, driving music, with an urgency not heard in most alt-country. Patterson Hood's raspy vox perfectly fit the music, and the warm guitar sound dominates. Since this is a live album, the songs incorporate some extended bluesy jams. The performance is staggering enough to elicit the drunken shouts for "More!" at the end of the album. The punk roots of the band are evident, most explicitly in the Jim Carroll cover on track 11. "Steve McQueen" is a rousing tribute to a childhood hero, which segues into "Gimme Three Steps" and back again. "The Avon Lady" is an improvised tale of a neighbor who's a tad overzealous in the pushing of make-up products. "Margo & Harold," a song about how people grow weirder with each passing year, also does the service of explaining the title. The most powerful track on the disc is "The Living Bubba," a plaintive cry from a musician dying of AIDS, needing just a little more time to live as he's "got another show." The drunken pyschobilly is what gives the compositions their energy and momentum, but it is songs like this one which gives the album its power. Great stuff.

© Jeremy Salmon /TiVo