Sad Bastard Songs

Jay Berndt began his musical career as the sandpaper-throated voice of Kilgore, a proudly blue-collar Rhode Island metal band that undeservedly spent the majority of the ‘90s as Ozzfest also-rans. In 2010, nearly a decade after Kilgore’s dissolution, Berndt re-emerged with Sad Bastard Songs, an album of hard-bitten Americana steeped in the renegade spirit of the ‘70s outlaw country movement. Though hardship, regret, and frustrated expectations are recurrent themes on Sad Bastard Songs, Brendt never lets himself wallow in self-pity; he invests these barroom ballads with just the right level of road-weary gravitas. The downcast honky-tonk of “Black, Tan, and Wasted” and the late-night confessional “Running Blues” channel both the introspective lyricism of Guy Clark and the proud indignation of David Allan Coe’s “Longhaired Redneck.” Berndt’s songs are simple and satisfyingly straightforward. Though they may lack the finely honed storytelling of Patterson Hood’s character-driven hillbilly sagas, they’re well-crafted, eminently satisfying examples of modern Americana.