Backyard Babies are on an indefinite hiatus (they do say there will be another album in the future, they’re just not sure when); Dregen’s currently touring with Mike Monroe and putting out albums with Midlife Crisis, and Nicke Borg is putting out solo albums as Homeland. Borg released the four song EP Chapter 1 last year and is already back with the full-length Chapter 2, but that’s no surprise given the sleazy Swede’s penchant for penning songs. In fact, Borg, clean and sober for the first time in his life (thanks to friend and fellow rock n’ roller Mike Ness), spends most of his time now reaping commercial success by writing hit songs for teen pop stars in his native land. Anyone familiar with the last few Babies albums might have seen this kind of thing coming from Borg, as Chapter 2 presents a continuation of the kind of music found on songs like “Abandon” and “Saved By the Bell” from 2008′s self-titled album and “Roads” from 2006′s People Like People Like People Like Us. However, without the constraints placed on him by his role in a sleaze rock band, Borg stretches his acoustic styling to include orchestration (“Leaving Home”), straightforward rock songs (“No Regrets,” “Nowhereeverdevilland,” “Father of a Father”), and a duet with Camela Leierth (“All Stars”). It’s also clear that Ness’ influence not only impacted Borg’s personal life, but his life as a balladeer as well, as songs like “Alone,” “The Young Ones,” and “Heroes and Freaks” contain the country-fried, So-Cal twang n’ drive of Cheating at Solitaire and some of Social Distortion’s sun-drenched moments (there’s even a cover of “Bad Luck” included here). We might not know until the next Babies album if Borg is suffering his own midlife crisis right now or not, but before Total 13 there was “Lies” and “Kickin’ Up Dust” and “God’s Favourite,” so this kind of genuine songwriting has always existed in Borg. However, it would be awfully nice if the Babies put out another album like Total 13 so we can all forget how old we are and pretend we don’t need a Chapter 3.
Check out the video for “Leaving Home” from Chapter 2!
I’ve never been able to keep track of Maylene’s line-up from album to album, and, in fact, it looks like there’s a few new beards this time around as well, but what I have been able to keep track of is the Alabama band’s Southern-roasted biker rock, which has always tasted as consistently good as a pig on a spit. The band’s appeal as white trash jug guzzlers has always carried certain weight with me, the inbred rage of album’s I through III irrevocably bad-ass, a lethal mix of metalcore and steel-eyed country power fused by shack burnin’ riffs and shit-drunk hooks. However, it seems as though someone filtered the swamp water Maylene’s been sippin’ for inspiration because with the exception of opening track “In Dead We Dream,” which is as close as the band comes to retaining any ounce of their previous nastiness, IV is — to put it in terms familiar to the band — a disaster. The frothy energy has fizzled out, the dirty heaviness has been cleaned up, and vocalist Dallas Taylor’s maniacal, backwoods barking has been carried away on some cruel prairie wind. In fact, a good deal of IV‘s songs sound like goth-treated modern day Bon Jovi ballads, produced exclusively for radio mediocrity. It ends, as all their albums do, with a back porch sun-downer courtesy of “Drought of ’85″ (that is if you completely disregarding whatever the hell “Off to the Laughing Place” is supposed to be, and I suggest you do), but its predictable reprieve comes much too late. It’s not the biggest disappointment of the year (no one’s going to take that honour away from Black Tide), but instead of tearing my shirt off and wrapping my mouth around an exhaust pipe I’m snacking on an apple and moseying on down the road.
Gideon Smith and The Dixie Damned 30 Weight
Small Stone
With one of the most recognizable voices in all of heavy music, the swamp wizard himself, Gideon Smith, returns to howl at the moon with 30 Weight, another album of psychedelic motorcycle blues that has me (and no doubt others of my ilk who have also previously written about The Dixie Damned’s Southern boogie doom) tripping over myself trying to come up with a fresh way to sell the North Carolina band’s super-charmed snake oil. Just like previous full-lengths, 2004′s Southern Gentlemen and 2008′s South Side of the Moon, 30 Weight mixes the spiritual fire-eating of The Cult and the steely-eyed machismo of Circus of Power (see, I’m doing it already) for a deadly concoction of outlaw riffs and acid groove where songs like “Feel Alive” and “Shining Star” are this album’s “Whiskey Devil” and “Shimmering Rain,” respectively. That would also make the song “South” quite self-explanatory, as well. However, Gideon manages to add a few new ingredients to his brew this time around, like a female back-up singer on “Ride With Me” and a couple of covers, including a slow cooked version of Saint Vitus’ “I Bleed Black” and G.G. Allin’s “When I Die,” a poignantly raw country and western song in which Gideon strips it all down, even his voice. While GS&TDD fans will find a familiar comfort in 30 Weight‘s cattle skull savagery, the inexperienced can start here and work their way back down the dusty highway the band has forged without feeling like they’ve arrived late to the midnight ritual dance.
Nicke Borg Homeland
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster
Gideon Smith and The Dixie Damned