The southern rock revival led by Black Stone Cherry finds skilled reinforcements here. There’s nothing revolutionary in the Stones country rock, Zep hard blues crunch and echo-chamber vocals Whiskey Myers mix.
It’s southern roots music as filtered through a bunch of long-haired Brits, a formula as old as the Allmans. The truth comes in Cody Cannon’s cracked cry, and his songs’ careful detail.
The flora and fauna of rural east Texas – ‘Sugar sand and red clay hills/Tall pine trees and whippoorwills’ – are the backdrop to hard luck working-class lives. Where The Sun Don’t Shine, especially, driven by lashing guitars and Kristen Rogers’ Merry Clayton-style wails, is a grim, contemporary Desolation Row, populated by paraplegic Iraq vets, single mum pole-dancers and moonshiners, surviving on the economy’s shady side.
Whiskey Myers rock optimistically hard, fuelled by southern pride. But they take their local losers along for the ride./o:p
