13
After successfully reinventing himself as a guitar-slinging, martini-toasting, tattooed, jumpin' jive crooner, ex-Stray Cat frontman Brian Setzer struts his rocking rebel persona into a slightly altered groove. Despite the unimaginative title, the singer/guitarist's 13th album (with 13 songs, natch) is an attempt to bring his reverb-drenched rumble to a tougher, less stylized persona. Some of it connects as a combination of Gov't Mule's '70s riffage with a twang accent, as on the pumped up "Everybody's Up to Somethin'" and the opening salvo of "Drugs and Alcohol (Bullet Holes)." But Setzer seems to be forcing these songs, especially vocally, desperate to avoid being pigeonholed as a two-trick pony. Much better is the rugged rockabilly of "Take a Chance on Love" and the muscular street-gang switchblade of "We Are the Marauders." There's a '50s rumble to "Don't Say You Love Me" that seems like a Stray Cats leftover now beefed up for a more potent attack. "Really Rockabilly" skewers the purists that want to force Setzer into his old genre ("he wears 1956 underwear") but when he strides into jazz mode on "Mini Bar Blues," the album's only instrumental, it's a fresh breath of '50s air next to the simplistic lyrics and fist-pounding tempo of the following "Bad Bad Girl." You can't fault the artist for pushing his boundaries, but this eclectic collection wants to have it both ways; keeping his old fans satiated with Setzer-certified hipster swing, such as "When Hepcat Gets the Blues," while aiming for a broader appeal with his less successful stab at dated, if effectively stripped down, hard rock.--Hal Horowitz