Heritage

The road to Hell, as we all know, is paved with good intentions, and it seems that the Youngers have taken a long drive down that very same path. The group's second album, Heritage, is an unusually earnest set of roots rock and alt country, filled with tales of bad luck and lives on the line, and the music has been given the endorsement of John Carter Cash, son of the Man in Black himself, who produced the sessions, as well musicians who've backed up Del McCoury and Waylon Jennings and pop up here as special guests. Given that folks who should know have given this band the nod, it's more than a little disappointing to report that the best moments on Heritage sound like a slower and less exciting version of the Bottle Rockets, dwelling on enough thematic archetypes to make most of these songs sound as if they've been assembled from clichés left over by Jay Farrar, Bruce Springsteen, and Patterson Hood. (The Youngers' Springsteen fetish reaches its height on "Middle of the Night," which not only borrows more than a bit of style and wordplay from The Boss but features a sub-Clarence Clemons sax part played by some session musician who wisely remains nameless.) The group's songwriters, Todd Bartolo and Randy Krater, are clearly talented and aren't afraid to say what they mean in the 13 songs on Heritage, but their sincerity also makes this album's flaws all the more obvious — the plain-spoken passion of "The Wild Ones" and the title cut make the clunky lyrics impossible to ignore, which is a shame since the tunes where the band works on a smaller emotional scale, such as "Our Little Secret" and "Right All the Wrongs," show the Youngers can play flinty and effective honky tonk stuff when they're of a mind. The sad irony is that Heritage works best when the Youngers aren't attempting to say something "important" — maybe a set of drinking songs would be a good theme for their next album.