Music: LEAN FORWARD ~ Bottle Rockets
A fair-to-middling effort from Festus, MO’s favorite sons, more mediocre than not. The album begins strongly with “The Long Way” and “Shame on Me”, but then tries too hard to achieve a chooglin’, Allman Brothers-esque groove, and stumbles hard. The Bottle Rockets fail when they try to be timely and topical, as on “Hard Times” and the dreadful anti-war screed “Kid Next Door”. Although “Get on the Bus” is an amusing ode to the hell of public transit, the band has also lost any sense of humor they had on previous songs (e.g. “Indianapolis”, “The Bars on Fire”, “Gotta Get Up”). “Open Your Eyes” is one of the most unconvincing love songs ever, but “Slip Away” (not a Clarence Carter cover, sadly) has its charms. Overall, a disappointment from one of my well-liked bands.
