(Warners)
***
Review: Graham Reid
Most often associated with No Depression/alt country bands like Wilco and Son Volt (though with ears tuned to Clash albums), this four-piece out of Dallas fire up the pop end of things - not dissimilar to what Wilco did on their last album - and drive home some
nail-hard melodies with tough-minded guitars (the opener Jagged comes with finger-blistering Neil Young-styled guitar.)
They take off down Tom Petty's more bumpy backroads (Oppenheimer with Fab Four handclaps), drop in appealing lo-fi slap drums, kazoo and country harmonies with Carl Perkins guitar (Crash on the Barrelhead) and Let the Idiot Speak comes with quicktime country-picking electrofuzz guitars and flickering drums redolent of the Meat Puppets. All very cool.
Singer-songwriter Rhett Miller still sounds like someone should get him off the ledge and onto the Prozac, but the power-pop elements here (Murder, Nineteen) at times puts this closer to the Gin Blossoms than the ragged edge country of their previous albums.
More accessible - or just less dangerous? Make what you will.
