Friday, July 28, 2006

Bottle Rockets, June 2006

Should it worry me that this was accompanied, on the Post Web site, by an ad for erectile-dysfunction treatment?

Missouri's Bottle Rockets Light Up the Night at Iota

Washington Post, Thursday, June 22, 2006; Page C04

How do you make the second night of a two-night stand special? On Monday night at Iota, the Bottle Rockets began their set with the entirety of their new album, "Zoysia." On Tuesday, frontman Brian Henneman announced his approach to the sophomore jinx: The Missouri rural-rock band would alternate songs from "Zoysia" with other "hits" from its 14-year career.

It was a move as well thought out as the Rockets' music, which balances influences with a finesse that sideshow performers and single moms would envy. "Get Down, River," which sounded like the Appalachian folk classic "Long Black Veil" transformed into a waltz-time slow-rocker, flowed into "I Quit," an appealing combo of funk and country-rock, followed by the laconic honky-tonk two-step "Blind." Polished yet propulsive, the four-piece band was at least the sum of its parts.

If the Rockets' set seemed a little safe, it was only by contrast with the openers. Bobby Bare Jr. and his five partners in taste crime offered such embellishments as a baritone sax, a guitarist whose windmilling endangered the overhead Christmas lights, a patched tambourine that looked as though someone had thrust an angry fist through it, and the lyrical sentiment "If you talk any faster with food in your teeth / I swear to God I am gonna call the police." The ensemble fell somewhere between Skynyrd and Zeppelin, with a bit of R.E.M.-like drone in the ursine Bare's vocals. It was music to get whiplash to: unsubtle, raucous and sublime.

-- Pamela Murray Winters

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