Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Criminals Starvation League The Longest Meow

[Bloodshot; 2006]

Styles: alt.country, southern rock
Others: Lynard Skynard, My Morning Jacket, Lambchop, some Frank Black

Beer, rock 'n' roll, and the South; there just isn't a trinity as holy as this, is there? Oh, wait. Yeah, perhaps that one. But you've got to admit, it's a great combo that rivals that of a McDonald's Big Mac with fries and a Coke. It is the real America, ladies and gentlemen, and Bobby Bare Jr. knows exactly how it's done: take a bunch of your excellent musician buddies, have some beers, rock out for 11 hours, and voilà — you've got a record.

And not one of them run-of-the-mill R&B records, either. This is meat-and-potatoes music. Between the full-out rock-outs such as "The Heart Bionic" and "Borrow Your Cape" (which benefits tremendously from a few members of My Morning Jacket) to the fragile and torn acoustic cover of Pixies' "Where Is My Mind," this is an irresistible record. The Longest Meow is twelve tracks worth of beautifully crafted alternative rock-country.

The fact sheet surrounding The Longest Meow plays like a perfectly set-up reality television program. Take Bobby Bare Jr., who released two other insanely enjoyable solo records before this one (From the End of Your Leash and Young Criminals' Starvation League, for those who are counting), and mix him with an all-star cast of alt.country hopefuls, including members of Clem Snide, the previously mentioned My Morning Jacket, ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, and Lambchop. What do you get? A well-performed, engaging, dynamic record that captures all the magic a great live performance should. And while the trinity presented here may not be that of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost, on this occasion, it feels like a pretty damned good runner-up.

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