The Nashville-based, hard-rocking Country Westerns return with their sophomore album Forgive The City, bringing with them a classic rock sound that is spiced with punk rock energy.
Guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Joseph Plunket and drummer Brian Kotzur form the core of the band with bassist Jordan Jones adding some oomph and producer Matt Sweeney (Zwan, Dax Riggs) dropping in a few lead guitar lines as well. The dozen songs presented are stout, touching on camaraderie, hardships, and the struggle to get through this thing called life.
Opening with the earnest straight-ahead rock of “Knucklen’”, Plunket sets the tone with his gruff, road-weary voice, as the band bangs forward with aggressive sounds. The group has a clear punk ethos with songs barely ever touching three minutes, as the hyper drums from Kotzur move things along winningly, such as in the upbeat “Grapefruit” which recalls The Replacements brand of highwire, midwestern rock.
The group can also slow it down with the swaying “Speaking Ill of The Blues”, the slapping laid-back groove of “Money on the Table” and “Wait For It” which pushes Plunket’s vocals front and center. Sounding like a mix of Tim Armstrong and Bob Seager, Plunket’s harsher sound may not be for everyone, but the world-weary flow hits home; you know he’s lived it, and if he hasn’t, he sure as hell sounds like he has.
The band delivers bright Mike Campbell-like guitar lines in the softer, classic rock-sounding “It’s A Livin’” while also bringing a Titus Andronicus-like thunder with punk changes on” Cussin’ Christians”. Country Westerns aren’t breaking new ground, they deliver bar band rock and it doesn’t always achieve lift-off, “Something Goes Wrong” is fairly dull and the album ends oddly with the average “Marinero”, but when they nail it, like on the vibrating, snakey garage rock of “Hell” and the band’s theme song “Country Westerns”, there is an exhilarating vitality to their tunes which raises them high above your run of the mill rockers.
Country Westerns sweat for their pay as they craft tidy, punchy songs and sounds around a tried and true formula. Heartfelt lyrics and impassioned delivery of rock and roll flow throughout Forgive The City.
