Straddling the line between dumb hillbilly stoners and genius sleaze-rock satirists, Nashville Pussy are an acquired taste, but a taste worth acquiring for anyone who ever wondered what a bar-room brawl between Motörhead, Kid Rock and Steel Panther might sound like.
Fronted by husband-and-wife duo Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys, the Atlanta-based hairy quartet specialise in roaring biker-punk party anthems about moonshine, weed and trailer-trash sex. If you need a measure of their puerile humour, Suys sometimes moonlights in a comedy metal band called Dick Delicious And The Tasty Testicles.
But there is plenty of self-satirising wit on this decade-spanning retrospective too, in song titles such as The South Is Too Fat To Rise Again and lyrics like the killer opening to Before The Drugs Wear Off: ‘You’re meaner than shit, hotter than hell, ten months pregnant but you can’t even tell.’ Blammo!
It also makes perfect sense that Lemmy provides guest vocals on Lazy Jesus, an hilarious attack on the son of God for being a pious layabout snob: ‘You don’t do nothing except tell everybody they’re wrong.’ Correct.
Nashville Pussy are hardly cutting-edge innovators, but they play with swagger and ugly-sexy attitude, reminding us that rock’n’roll was spawned from the illicit, profane, salacious, late-night saloon-bar hedonism of the Deep South. On faster numbers their supercharged guitars even out-riff AC/DC.
The only disappointment here is the bonus six-track live CD, mostly disposable apart from an extended cover of Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits, which is gloriously sloppy./o:p
