psychobilly!
I came across
Reverend Horton Heat through the allmusic article on
The Living End, which cited them as the rockabilly cats of the 90s, which immediately endeared them to me. I am a sucker for people being called cats, and my especial favourite is hepcats. My enthusiasm was dimmed when I got
The Cramps as well and didn't really feel it, but right now I am listening to
If You Got 'em, Smoke 'em for the first time and loving it.
Recently it seems I have been edging into weird country-related genres (cowpunk (!) courtesy of
Meat Puppets, psychobilly from the Reverend) and liking them more than I feel I have the right to. My experience of pure country is pretty much
Johnny Cash and anonymous men with guitars and twangs. Johnny Cash, as everyone knows, is a king among men, but country seems to me to be usually one of the most boring genres out there. My inexperience is showing, but whatever. Until someone proves to me country is worth the delve, I'll stick to the bizarre offshoots.
Anyway, the Reverend.
Reasons to like: from Texas, upright bass, crazy energy, crazy guitar, crazy drums, old-style vocals
Reasons to dislike: ???
Bullet
The album starts off with this swingin’ instrumental that starts quiet but builds up pretty quickly and heavily, with a few interspersed coarse howls from the Reverend and brief quiet passages. Toe-tappin stuff, keeps to the same pattern but just gets fiercer as it goes along.
I’m Mad
Lyrically pretty simple (guy mad at his lazy good-for-nothing girlfriend). The music is what sells this song. Crazy-fast all around, almost out of control, centring around the Reverend’s
I've had it up to here
I'm mad!
I'm mad!
Again, hard to keep the feet still, but for this one I had trouble keeping my head still.
Bad Reputation
Another song with a classic sound to it, it sounds pretty country, but the (unsurprising) twist here is that the girl with the bad reputation is the kind of girl the singer is into. In fact, she is the kind of girl he’d like to eat, to put it like he does, the first instance of the dirty kind of stuff these guys revel in.
You've got bright red lips and a pretty face
A rose tattooed in a private place
Spiked high heels and a wiggle in your walk
Makin' everyone in this big city talk
It’s a Dark Day
Slower this time, where the Reverend shows a different side of his voice, with extended notes, sung slow in a minor key, more like a crooner than anything else. The first four lines of the chorus are a slight up from the atmosphere, but it quickly returns to its dark atmosphere
And it's a dark day, for love
And it's a cool day, for pain
And it's an old day, for a young man
So callous and vain, but not insane
Well, maybe just a little hard
I really like this song, it’s a nice relief from the relentless speed the album started with, and strong in its own intense, brooding way. This surely isn’t a one-trick band if this song is anything to go by.
Big Dwarf Rodeo
And if you want politically incorrect, check this out! Though the actual song doesn’t have much to do with actual dwarfs, as it’s about a rodeo where everything is small, as in:
Tiny little broncs that bust
Tiny little clowns that fuss
Tiny little cattle that ride
And sell you itsy little biddy cowhide
This song is more mid-tempo, and also clearly country-tinged, albeit with the same dark tinge that suffuses all the songs. Kinda strange without a point, as in what are world-famous high diving mules supposed to be, and what’s with the pig that goes to school? The instrumental section is less remarkable than the others so far, and this song is the most filler-ish so far, as it doesn’t really go anywhere or do anything that catches my interest.
Psychobilly Freakout
This song is exactly what it claims to be. As fast as I’m Mad, with the guitar leading the way, alternating between spaced out effects and straightforward speedy melodies, with the drums crashing their way along and the bass pounding along powerfully. This song summarises itself thus:
I’ll tell you what it is!
Some kind of Texas psychobilly freakout, that’s what it is!
Put It To Me Straight
Very rockabilly here, modernised in that it is a sex song here, the highlight of it being:
Slow down!
Woo! just a little bit
Baby, kiss my lips
And I'm about to throw some
Kind of spastic fit
Kind of understated musically compared to the other songs, vocals up front, not a favourite but got a laugh out loud first time I heard about the spastic fit.
Marijuana
Another instrumental, this one’s foundations being the tom-heavy drumbeat. Plays with dynamics, switching to snare when it’s on the up, solid bassline all the way through, fun guitar as always. Also, the classic “saying the title occasionally during breaks in the song” thing happening. Almost too long at nearly five minutes, but stays enjoyable pretty much the way through due to the intensity changing regularly through the song.
Baby, You Know Who
Reminded me immediately of
I Ain’t Got You, down to the timing of the vocals:
I've got chicks to the left, women to the right
Guess who it is I think about at night
It's you, yeah you, it's you
Baby you know who
The rest isn’t as similar, and his voice carries it well enough that I like it better than I Ain’t Got You anyway. It’s nice to find simple heartfelt lyrics on such a wacky album as this, with:
Just ask my closest friends what's true
They'll say I'm still in love with you
I want you back and I need you real bad
You're the best damn lover I've ever had
A little one-dimensional but also unique in some way I haven’t actually worked out yet. It seems a little more broken up than the other songs, more conventionally structured musically? I’m not really sure what I’m saying here, I may work it out one day.
Eat Steak
Hilariously insensitive song. Quieter drums, very country, rockin’ along pretty calmly the whole way, the focus entirely on such lyrics as:
Eat a cow, eat a cow cause it's good for you.
Eat a cow, eat a cow it's a thing that goes "mooooo"
With great insight into the transformation of cow to meat:
Look at all the cows in the slaughterhouse yard.
Gotta hit 'em in the head, gotta hit 'em real hard.
First you gotta clean 'em then the butcher cuts 'em up,
Throws it on a scale, throws an eyeball in a cup.
More funny than musically interesting, but it’s funny enough to get my seal of approval.
“D” for Dangerous
Pretty mellow for this album, with low-grade ominousness (ominosity?) and a relatively slow rhythm section. Also, I get the feeling that a band having this many instrumentals doesn’t show a lack of lyrical skills but a justified confidence in the music they put out. Meat Puppets and these guys both have plenty of great instrumentals, and I think it’s a pity that fewer bands are prepared to let their music speak for itself like these guys. This track, like the other instrumentals on this album has the guitar alternate between controlled slow darker stuff and energetic sharper upbeat sections, with the rhythm section rising and dropping to fit in with it.
Love Whip
I can hear harmonica, and I can hear piano. A pretty classic rock ‘n’ roll song until you start to pay attention to the lyrics, delivered with that good ol’ growl to his voice that brings so much swagger and style to the song that it doesn’t really matter what he’s singing. Which is stuff like this:
Took me home, took the phone off the hook
She said “Baby come and take a look
At my love whip”
Hanging on a bare hip
Seems to be a rock-solid trio (the Reverend [aka Jim Heath] on guitar and vocals, Jimbo Wallace on bass and Patrick Bentley on drums. Each member has a vital part to play, and they fit seamlessly together. The album was recorded live off the floor (except for Love Whip, which had a guest pianist, harmonica-er, and a horn section) after they had recorded it traditionally and rejected the result as not having the feel they wanted. Overall it’s a pretty consistent album, with definite high points and a couple of throwaways, and I definitely want to check out the rest of their catalogue.
Meat Puppets
