FEATURED REVIEW...........................................................26 SEPT 2005
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Artist:
BASTARD SONS OF JOHNNY CASH |
It takes buckets of chutzpah to call your band "Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash." Or at least a keen marketing sense. Every BSOJC review, it seems, begins with some reference to the band's ballsy moniker. Mark Stuart and the boys must be tickled pink with the mileage they've gotten out of the gimmick. (Incidentally, on the topic of marketing gimmicks, we'd like to propose that the band start peddling t-shirts emblazoned with the ambiguous slogan "the BS of JC." Now that would get under a few people's skin.)
Mile Markers is the third full-length release from BSOJC. As its title suggests, the album is steeped in the highway tradition of American music. While loath to channel the Man in Black directly, the Bastard Sons do give a courteous nod to a few of his roadbound compatriots: "King of the World" is a catchy tune that might be a lost Tom Petty track, "No Easy Road" is a rollicking outlaw number with Waylon's distinctive swagger, and "Night Comes Down" finds Stuart doing his best Springsteen sneer. Homage notwithstanding, Mile Markers is a strong collection of original songs that do not feel overwhelmingly derivative.
That's not to say that this road album doesn't have a pothole or two. For starters, the album includes a few too many hearts. (Anything your grandmother might appliqué on an apron should not be used as imagery in an alt.country song. This includes--but is not limited to--angels, acorns, butterflies, kittens, sunflowers, stars, and hearts.) In addition to the opening couplet of "Night Comes Down" ("Well, the ways of the heart / It's a treacherous thing"), heart references appear in "Lonely Tonight," ("When broken dreams and promises / Have left these scars upon your heart") "Restless Heart" ("Keep your fire burning / 'Til this restless heart comes wandering back to you") and "The Borderline of the Heart." ("I wasn't looking but I found love / Across the borderline of the heart.") Cheezy.
While we withheld judgement on the pronoun/antecedent problem in "Night Comes Down," we cannot resist comment on Stuart's line "I'm just askin', 'Is you lonely tonight?'" Simply: we are willing to grant considerable grammatical license to a genre with working-class interests, but "Is you lonely tonight?" pushes the limits of our indulgence.
In summation: Breezy, listenable Americana. If any of us could still afford gas, we'd recommend taking this one on a road trip. Too much heart, however, and some hammed up "yokel-speak" earn the bastards two cheezeballs.
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A NOTE ON THE RATING SYSTEM:
5 CHEEZEBALLS = UNLISTENABLE SCHLOCK
3 CHEEZEBALLS = A DIFFICULT SLOG
1 CHEEZEBALL = THE ODD FORGIVABLE MISSTEP
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