With Imperial churning out
Sandy Nelson LPs at a breakneck pace, the drummer began to explore genres some distance outside of his trademark proto-surf bailiwick. With
Country Style, he tackles Nashville hits of the past and present, and if classics like
Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life,"
Jim Reeves' "Four Walls," and
Johnny Horton's "The Battle of New Orleans" seem like odd choices for a drummer of
Nelson's energy and abandon, you're right. His primal style proves painfully ill suited to these barroom ballads and honky tonk in general, which relies on the kinds of nuanced, consistent backbeats that are anathema to the
Nelson aesthetic; if anything, this is Bizarro country, elevating drums to the foreground while relegating guitar and fiddle to the shadows, and the formula falls flat. ~ Jason Ankeny