Meat Raffle Road

Well, it’s about damn time! Just when you’d given up all hope for the condition of the ol’ honky-tonk music, Meat Raffle Road delivers up their debut record Eaten By Crows, twelve songs whose roots are deep and long enough to strangle the pompous, bloated imposter that is contemporary Nashville. Twelve songs whose big, dusty boots are itchin’ to kick the stinking, swollen corpse of modern commercial country into the gaping grave that this Midwestern outlaw duo has freshly dug. Mind you, these guys aren’t your run-of-the-barn shitkickers, no sirree! Don’t believe it? Just listen to the chilling storm warning that is “Thunder God”. Brutal, ain’t it, with all those swirling guitars and “Whiskey” Dick’s baleful, ill-bodin’ voice sounding the alarm? And if that didn’t scare you off, give a listen to their hair-raisin’ retelling of the legend of the “Hodag”, a raw, Northwoods hillbilly stomp that won’t fail to keep the kids up at night. And while you’re at it, you won’t want to miss the room spinning crowd pleaser “Shitfaced”, a yarn of inebriation that’s all true – MRR has the affidavits to prove it. You want politics? “Pacifist Jew” will do the trick. It’s got a chorus you’ll be hummin’ all the way to the meetin’ hall. But you’ll probably have to make up your own story for “Country Krankenpfleger”. It’s Black Forest Americana that will have Sid Griffin scramblin’ for his translation software. So here it is. Three years in the makin’. All the tasty instrumentation you would expect from Mr. Bryan Knisley and that wild-eyed prairie poetry from Mr. Lawrence. They are Meat Raffle Road and they would be mighty obliged if you would join them for a stroll in their neck of the woods. [Kevin Lian-Anderson]

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