Ricky Feather's hoarse-throated, barely human growl may be off-putting to listeners of Bone, Hair & Hide, but the real delight on this effort is the instrumentation. Bodeco whips through these rumbles like nobody's business. There's a premium on guitar work here, and Feather and Matthew O'Bannon's lean barbed-wire attack would make Duane Eddy and Link Wray proud. (And they're backed by a jumpin' three-person rhythm section that, besides standard drum'n'bass, includes percussionist Gary Stillwell.) The album swings from straight up rock & roll to rockabilly, country shuffling (on "Midnight Cowboy"), to psychobilly, blues, and back again. This is a lost early-'90s gem, and Bodeco remains under-recognized among such peers as Reverend Horton Heat, Southern Culture on the Skids, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
© Erik Hage /TiVo