The Bottle Rockets on Audiotree Live

If Neil Young had played guitar and written songs with Lynyrd Skynyrd, it might've come out something like the eponymous debut by Festus, MO's own Bottle Rockets. Raw and spirited, with a guitar attack that burns furiously, this record was recorded and mixed in a couple of days. And although it contains some strong material, overall it lacks the focus of the band's follow-up, The Brooklyn Side. That's not to say that this one should be passed over; there's a satisfying mix of rockers and country-tinged numbers. Frontman and principle songwriter Brian Henneman's keen observations on everyday rural life and characters are explored with insightful detail in songs about convenience store clerks and trailer inhabitants. In the Southern rock-sounding "Wave That Flag," he takes an angry shot at rebel flag-wavers, and the escape of a dead-end life in the ragged and breakneck-speed country-rocker "Rural Route." Before the Bottle Rockets, Henneman served a tenure as guitar technician and sometime instrumentalist for Uncle Tupelo, and both Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar make backup vocal appearances, with Farrar giving a particularly strong performance on the highlight ballad, "Kerosene."