I cannot tell a lie (no really, I'm a G-d awful liar): I was essentially expecting Blues Hammer . Sauce Boss won't change your life, but he's a hell of a lot better than that. For one thing, he's got range. There's the expected electric power trio some stuff, some tasty acoustic slide (unsurprisingly most prominent on the Robert Johnson cover), two tracks (Down In Georgia and I Need A Friend) that show how close country and blues can get to each other, a track in a sort of

First things first: no, I did not pay ten bucks for this. I don't know what that number means, but it was most certainly not the price. Now that that's established, what's on the front cover that's actually supposed to be there? We have an older gent in full chef's regalia, holding a guitar, and standing in front of a cloud. I'm a little frightened at how much sense that makes, because the amount of sense that should make is zero. But it makes sense for the boss of sauce

It's country all right, but not quite what I expected. At least, not entirely. There's a wide variety of styles covered here and the songs are, so far as I can tell, all covers (there are no writing credits anywhere, but I recognize I've Never Been To Spain, I'll Fly Away, and Feeling Alright, a quick search shows that everyone has done My Window Faces South, and El Camenchero appears to be this ). The record scans less as sidemen and studio pros finally getting a chance t

I'm not sure which is more obvious: that this is a country record, or that it's from the 1970s. I admit, the encomium from Porter Wagoner seems hard to top, or even equal, and the outfits on the front cover are a wash (they're both very, very country and very, very, '70s). The back cover garb is more country than '70s, as it still looks like something anyone in Nashville might wear, which is remarkable for clothing from the decade that gave us the leisure suit. But the fro

Hey all--heading out on vacay! See you on 9/19.

I wasn't really right and I wasn't really wrong. Do You Have A Formal Dining Area? is 1990s af, but it's not grunge. It's more like...

There are far more layers of irony here than any one band should have. We've got the punning band name, which actually counts double...

Suddenly that joke about the band being time travelers doesn't seem like a joke anymore. Ant Farm absolutely sounds like a lost 1980s...

I don't care that there's a 1997 copyright date, I look at those three guys and the only thing I can see is "1980s College Rock." No...

I was not right and this was not good. It's not art rock or freak folk or anything else that I would've guessed, as evidenced by the fact...

K, we're gonna start this one off with a data dump, because a lot of basic info is readily available from the packaging. Vinyl Williams...

I was exactly correct: Industrial metal, with all the influences I predicted. But there's so much depth and variety even within...

Well, we've got the best cheap CGI figure available in 2k1, which means it basically looks like what James Cameron was able to make with...

So as suspected, Operation Pick A Generic Rock Album I'll Have A Hard Time Getting Through was a failure; this is indeed a record of...

For this post I randomly grabbed a disc out of the stack of CDs I've got ready to go for the blog, and I have to say this is not what I...

There are a lot of dark colors in the artwork, yet it feels warm and inviting. Which makes it perfect for this album, which is...

Even if I didn't love comics books--if you haven't checked in lately, there's a lot of comic art like this these days--the art would've...

Called it: This is straight up melodic rock & roll. Tuneful, nice harmonies, energetic but never all that loud, you know how melodic...

A fear of absolutely everything, huh? These days I consider that a healthy, well-adjusted response to life, but in 2001 it was just a...

Hey I was right! And what's more, it's really good! OK, so only two songs are full-on, nothing-else-you-could-call-them freak folk: You...