As an inveterate lover of boozy, rowdy, loud country-rock, the Weight's Are Men should be precisely my brand of critical catnip. The New York-by-way-of-Georgia act evokes both Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle in the half-twangy, half-grizzled voice of its lead singer, Joseph Plunket, and proffers sloppy southern-friend grooves to match. Of course, even a style as seemingly unschooled and off-the-cuff as the Weight's is still a style, and the band's shambling insouciance paradoxically can feel just as contrived as any more obviously fussed-over assembly-line C&W.
Are Men shambles out of the gate with the drunk shuffle of "Like Me Better", and right away it's easy to get sucked in by the band's compelling aesthetic charms. Plunket has the kind of perfect country voice that's suffused with knowing heartache yet somehow still sounds effortlessly seductive, and the band behind him comfortably digs into a variety of tempos and styles. "Had It Made" coolly deploys a Chuck Berry waddle while the harmonica-driven "A Day in the Sun" explicitly mines the Stonesy blues-rock that's always lurking within this kind of music. "Johnny's Song" and "Hillbilly Highway" hold tantalizing teases of pedal steel and fiddle, respectively, and "Closer Than a Friend" tosses out a few "ooh la la la"s straight from Rubber Soul for good measure.
You'll notice a few very familiar names in the preceding paragraph, and that's part of the problem. These are exhaustively charted waters the band is navigating, and the sheer predictability of these moves can be numbing no matter how smoothly they're handled. A spark of wit or insight or even honest self-examination from Plunket's pen would have been greatly appreciated as well, but unfortunately he's mostly content to play the role of unflappably cool yet unspeakably damaged heartbreaker here, feigning hurt for anonymously hopeless girls with a depressing lack of real empathy. "Hillbilly Highway" and "Evergreen" boast their share of bucolic charms, and "Had It Made" offers a crowd-pleasing litany of Southern city names that brings to mind Wilco's "Monday", but those efforts are undercut by the churlish likes of "Sunday Driver" and "Closer Than a Friend", groupie-weary songs that remind you what a marvel Okkervil River's "On Tour With Zykos" really was.
To be a real rebel or outlaw and not just an immaculately disheveled pretender, you've got to be willing to risk looking like an ass, to risk saying something embarrassing or unpleasant, to deliberately put yourself outside your own comfort zone. Steve "Let's Empathize with an American Terrorist" Earle and Dwight "Sure, I'll Cover Queen in a Gap Commercial" Yoakam have utilized these principles in fashioning iconic careers. For the sake of comparison, hold The Weight's achievements up against those of another former Athens denizen, Jason Isbell. The latter clearly follows his own stubborn muse no matter what uncool roads or emotionally unflattering avenues it makes him follow. It's an example the Weight's wasted miles of style would be wise to emulate.
