Dan Baird & Homemade Sin

Dan Baird has made a habit of working with cool and talented rock & roll folks, and the first proper album from Dan Baird & Homemade Sin offers a lineup that should impress anyone with a taste for good and greasy hard rock boogie — Jason & the Scorchers guitarist Warner Hodges takes on lead six-string, drummer Mauro Magellan was (like Baird) a member of the Georgia Satellites, and Keith Christopher played bass with Shaver and the Yayhoos. With a lineup like that and the perennially underappreciated Tommy Womack contributing to the songwriting, this would seem to be the sort of album that can't miss, and it doesn't — Dan Baird & Homemade Sin is swaggering, beer-drinking, hell-raising, paycheck-spending rock & roll of the first order, and while conventional wisdom has it they don't make records like this anymore, thankfully Baird and his buddies aren't bothered by such trivialities. If you want to get your next party started, the Stones-influenced push and pull of "Just Can't Wait" will do the trick. If you're needing an appropriate soundtrack for your next week of living dangerously, "Two for Tuesday"'s tale of a vacation from responsibility should fill the bill. If you want a little country sway along with your rock, cue up "Hellzapoppin" and you'll be glad you did. Like something a little slow and moody? The swampy groove of "Crooked Smile" is just what you need. If you really want to hear Hodges bash the hell out of that guitar, "I Know What It's Like" delivers the goods and then some. And elsewhere, Baird & Homemade Sin hardly make a wrong move, as evidenced in the 100-proof playing, the fortified songwriting, and the thick and meaty production. It's been a long time since people made hard rock albums as fun, as strong, and as satisfying on a regular basis as this one, but if anyone can bring this stuff back and give it new life, it's Dan Baird & Homemade Sin.