Album Review: Shooter Jennings, Shooter

Shooter Jennings has always made a point of swerving expectation. The son of proper country music royalty – Waylon and Jessi Colter – his first couple of albums rocked a lot more than they yee-hawed, and that’s before Black Ribbons which featured one Stephen King on spoken word, and then Countach (For Giorgio), his hat-tip to Italian boogie-man Giorgio Moroder. You don’t get much of that action down The Opry.

If you were in any doubt that this new record is as country as a booze up in Tootsie’s World Famous Orchid Lounge, then a cursory glance at the titles should put you straight – ‘Do You Love Texas?’, ‘D.R.U.N.K.’, ‘Fast Horses & Good Hideouts’, etc., etc. He starts as he means to go on with ‘Bound Ta Git Down’, a horn-driven barroom honky-tonk which details Jennings’ philosophie de vivre, and any man who wants to “git down like a basset hound” is alright in my book.

There’s a few ballads amongst all the whoopin’ and hollerin’ too, ‘Living In A Minor Key’ and ‘Shades & Hues’ are suitably tinged with bitter-sweet regret. He then changes tack for the hard-working gal-having-a-night-out blues of ‘Denim & Diamonds’, which I sincerely hope is about the New York nightclub I had a high old time in more than once, back in the nineties.

The sound is pure late seventies country, Hank Williams, Jr. filtered through the blue print laid down by Jennings’ Daddy – the kind of thing you used to hear in the background of every Burt Reynolds movie. Think of last year’s So You Wannabe An Outlaw from Steve Earle, only a lot less po-faced, and a lot more fun. (Ten-gallon) hats off.

https://open.spotify.com/album/7aETyhIwmu3PpDFu2o12MG