Shake My Head

With essential tracks like “Friday Night,” “The Bottle,” and “Waking Up Drunk” in Spider Bags’ repertoire, the band's creative process seems pretty clear: get hammered, feel bad, write a song. Dan McGhee (of D.C.’s DC Snipers) moved to North Carolina a few years back, perhaps to nurture his latent country-punk sensibilities. The result has been a glorious melding of that genre with vintage and garage rock that's messy, fun, and memorable. Spider Bags' third album, Shake My Head, is like a great party that you remember for a good long time, and any fan of The Replacements, The Fleshtones, or King Kahn (in his many guises) should appreciate the amped-up hillbilly punk of “Keys to the City,” the garage-fume boogie of “Standing on a Curb,” and the good-time, ‘Mats-loving rocker “Friday Night.” The trio kicks up enough noise on the swampy “I’ll Go Crazy” and “The Moon Is a Schoolgirl” to sound like a five-piece, and McGhee’s witty lyrics and no-frills delivery (sometimes sounding like a cross between Paul Westerberg and Jeff Tweedy) is certainly enough to win him couch-surfing space wherever he goes.