.The Bottle Rockets

Lean Forward

Maybe the reason the Bottle Rockets haven’t achieved greater renown
during their sixteen-year career is that they’ve been identified with
the alt-country scene, which doesn’t seem to be marketable in the usual
sense. But Missouri’s Bottle Rockets aren’t really a roots-rock band in
the manner of Son Volt or Whiskeytown. There’s some twang in the
Rockets’ approach, but little in the way of country or even
country-rock influence. There’s much more of the rough-and-tumble,
blues-rock-inspired snarl of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bad Company.

The band’s 10th album, Lean Forward, is a fine distillation
and summation of the band’s strengths — songs are unadorned
slices of middle-American life; terse, lean, and memorable melodies,
plenty of snappish crunch in the guitar sound; and singing rich with a
lazy drawl that seems to recall a million past keg parties. The jaunty
“Done It All” captures that harrowing feeling of a life that’s going in
circles while adulthood laboriously sets in. “Nothin’ but a Driver”
conveys zeal for automotive-oriented employment with a shambling Bo
Diddley-style shuffling rhythm and wry dissonances evoking the squeal
of tires on pavement and the rush of Vivarin. There are wee country and
folk undertones on the wry “Get on the Bus,” evoking Little Feat and
the Pogues in their primes, and “Slip Away” carries echoes of
late-1960s/early-1970s sweet soul/R&B, but the Bottle Rockets are
really a successor to the Replacements. Lean Forward is
fine, earthy, timeless American rock ‘n’ roll. (Bloodshot)

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