Trick Pony

In case any doubt remained that the contemporary country music industry has no idea what it's doing, Trick Pony settles the issue with a shotgun approach that still manages to miss the side of the barn by a country mile. The first few tracks of this debut, for example, are clearly shooting for an alternative country vibe. This isn't necessarily a good thing. The group's first single, "Pour Me," with its standard honky-tonk theme, rocked-out guitars and one more round of thudding rockabilly beats, sounds like a dime-a-dozen insurgent country act with a bigger recording budget. If the group's version of Johnny Cash's "Big River" (with help from the Man in Black and Waylon Jennings) had a Bloodshot Records imprint attached to it, roots-rock weirdoes would be half-filling tiny clubs all over America to see it.

At least in that setting, Trick Pony's spiking of several other cuts with hip-hop elements might be appreciated ironically. Country music has always discovered fresh ideas in "black" sounds -- just ask Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills or the first Muscle Shoals rhythm section. But wooden raps and inelastic drummer breaks are neither funky nor fresh, regardless of who uses them.

The rest of the album plays it safe with generic Hot New Country. The nadir of this approach is probably "Just What I Do," where it's posited that Jesse James robbed, Orville Wright flew and Picaso (sic) painted (I'm the workinest painter that you ever saw) because these men weren't "getting no lovin' at all." Imagine lines such as these sung by a faux blues mama who looks like she's angling for a Sex in the City walk-on, or by a bass player who sports a leather version of the sort of hat once preferred by TV's Blossom, and you have contemporary country at its worst: foppish trick ponies singing preposterous ditties and jumping through hoops.