Blazing Grace
Anyone looking for some genuine country-rock should turn toA Blazing Graceby the reunited Jason and the Scorchers. This Nashville band spearheaded the "cow-punk" movement in the early '80s by combining songs about harvest moons, whiskey glasses, and mamas back home with twangy vocals, hyper tempos, and buzzing guitars. Ironically, the band broke up in '89 just after releasing its best album yet,Thunder and Fire.The quartet's new album picks up where "Thunder and Fire" left off. As on that '89 effort, Ringenberg cowrote several songs with Nashville's finest (Mike Henderson, Wayland Patton, Richard Fagan, and Todd Cerney this time out) and then attacked the results as if he were leading the Ramones at the Grand Ole Opry. This combination of painstaking songcraft and anything-goes performance pays off in a terrific album that marries the timeless themes of country to the immediate urgency of rock & roll. Like the church-going farm boy he once was, Ringenberg prays for "One More Day of Weekend" to escape the day-job grind and for protection from the violence and greed spilling out of "Hell's Gates," but he does so with a raucous shout over pushing, pounding drums and loud guitars. He slows down for "Where Bridges Never Burn," a quiet, mostly acoustic honky-tonk ballad about the impermanence of love. He revs up again for "Cry by Night Operator," a song about working two jobs--a daytime one as a commodity broker and a nighttime one as a saloon habitue "trying to drink her off my mind." It's a familiar scenario, but seldom has it enjoyed such funny lines or such super-fast, nonstop energy.--Geoffrey Himes