My apologies to allergists; this review is covered in dust. A layer of germy sediment covers The Waco Brothers' image as aging, hard-drinking, boot-sporting journeymen. Another covers their lyrics, which alternate rootin'-tootin' cliches and look-ma-no-fascism politics (think Asleep at the Wheel Against the Machine). Another covers their sound, which is, you know, prairie-punk or saloon-wave or whatever one is supposed to call self-consciously country-western iconoclast-pop in 2003. And decades of dust adorn, inches deep, the review-twerp complaint that I have to make: This amazing live band can't [sneeze, wipe eyes] capture their stage magic [adjust protective paper mask] in the studio.
Latecomers to the work of Jon Langford (can I get a show of hands for those familiar with him by way of the Palace Brothers' "For the Mekons et al" or Sally Timms' cover of "No More Rides"?) should know that he's a Windy City Welshman/liberal self-recast as a scrappy outlaw. And he ain't afraid to channel Sirs McGowan and Bragg to set that image in stone. The band's pedigree argues for the moniker Cred'N'Crud: they've got two Mekons, a Deano who swaps vox with Langford, and then guys from Jesus Jones and KMFDM. Yet, certain blissfully raucous moments on this album make one imagine a Clash that kept going, that became semi-competent at barn-dance swing, and set off a wave of copycat bands with names like Rodeo Chaos, Harvest Havoc, Sourgum Rebellion, Back Porch Culture Jam, and The Lone Star Radicals.
I had my crack team of scientistadors do lab experiments to figure out how the Wacos can be so hackneyed, yet still worth rooting for on transparent anthems such as "No Heart" and "New Deal Blues": the results were inconclusive. They did, however, prove that "The Lie" was better Farrar than Farrar, and that the minimal solo on the cover of "Johnson to Jones" is right up there with CCR's finest. My army of rhetoric-wizards and debate engineers declared that the Wacos think that their Bush-bashing is more revolutionary than it is, though they did note that the Wacos could knock a prefab Nashvillian such as Toby Keith on his super-seized, truck-pitching, hay-baling butthole. My resident visual artists' coalition proposed a sculpture, inspired by the Wacos, of humans trying to mate with jukeboxes, using hammers and sickles as contraceptives. My freeloading uncle said that "AFC Song"'s manic-depressive espousal of defeat as a route to victory and destructiveness as a path to creativity was copacetic enough to replace Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" as his afternoon nap-score. My pet Catholic priest pronounced the flat-funk "Just No Way" a source of shame for all mortalkind.
This band is aware that they're pretending, making up the genre of Chicagit-cowcore as they go along; that knowledge weirdly gives them a kind of cockiness associated with authenticity. They're keen to their schtick: selling a sold notion back to itself. And the idea of linking "progressive" rhetoric with a style known for clinging resolutely to its roots is kind of genius, like taking a jackhammer to the road to nowhere. S'true, the Waco Brothers rock live, all loud and fun and sweaty and unbowed. But the same could be said of Hank III. They need to make a record as vibrant as their activist spirit; otherwise this honky-tonk Sex Pistols pattern will have people saying they're so at home on the range they've become pretty vacant.
