Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys "Forever Always Ends"
You know how it is, don'tcha boys? You meet a girl in a honky tonk. You do a little drinking, a little dancing, a little more drinking, a little more drinking -- and before you know it you're saying things that you swore you never say to a woman again. You start thinking moons and June and -~ heaven help you -- you start spouting the F-word. No, not that F- word. We're talking the seven letters of doom, friend. We're talking FOREVER.
Things go alright at first -- she feeds you biscuits, you rub her feet -- but pretty soon she's not content with staying home on Friday nights, drinking chocolate milk and watching The Tick. She starts bringing home Martha Stewart curtains from K-mart and taking your Wu Tang posters off the wall -- and, worst of all, she starts "working late." Uh-huh. The dew is off the rose, but the ring's still on your finger -- and damned if it ain't cutting off your circulation.
So -- where can you turn when your good love's gone bad, you haven't had sex (with anyone besides yourself) in weeks, and you're starting to look and smell like Charles Bukowski? Turn to Bloodshot Records -- Chicago's Home of Insurgent Country, of course! We know plenty about watching helplessly as sweet promise goes bubbling down the crapper. We are an indie label after all.
Introducing Bloodshot's newest kings of pain: Kansas City's own Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys. Their tear-in-your-beer debut CD, Forever Always Ends, was recorded and produced in Springfield, Missouri by Skeletons wonderboy Lou Whitney (Wilco, Robbie Fulks, Hadacol) -- and it hits the nail of heartbreak square on the head.
Behold 14 original songs that take true love and turn it inside out -- and show you all the black stuff inside. Hobart's festered-romance lyrics, with their pretty-smart-for-a-country guy pretzel twists (Right foot, jealousy! Left foot, adultery!) are delivered in his classic Bakersfield croon, and dressed out with mandolin, harmonica, dobro, and aching steel guitar cries. Haggard and Paycheck would be proud, you can bet. And so would Rex's mom -- she wrote track #7, "Mother of a Member of the Band." I guess tearierkin' runs in the family.
Why not consider Forever Always Ends as a sort of mustard plaster for your sore pride? Hell, at least you're not as bad off as Hobart's loser heroes left at the altar ("I Always Cry at Weddings") or just plain left behind ("Rock and a Heartache", "Make Me Hate You") -- or are you?
BLOODSHOT RECORDS 3039 W. Irving Park Rd. Chicago IL 60618
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News psoted at 06/20/1999Country Release of the Week
Rex Hobart & the Misery Boys - Forever Always Ends (Bloodshot)Don't let the Bloodshot logo lull you into a false sense of twangcore. There is nothing alternative about Rex Hobart's country music, other than the fact that it is as pure as still liquor and just as potent. Hailing from Kansas City, MO, Hobart and the Misery Boys play it traditional and undiluted, drawing from sources like Buck Owens and Marty Robbins to create a middle America '60s vision of the form that has absolutely no aspirations to contemporary young alt.country Americana buzzword status.
Producer Lou Whitney has kept himself pretty well out of the way on the cheekily titled Forever Always Ends, other than making sure the needles pegged when it was appropriate. Whitney has wisely allowed Hobart and the Misery Boys plenty of berth to create these tributes to country classicism, as the band has peeled away all of the veneer to expose the raw material underneath. Hobart has no inclination tow~rd tempering his honest country presentation with the kind of pop compromise that has made a black hat millionaire out of Garth Brooks. He is completely comfortable with writing and arranging his amazingly direct material as though a hellhound (or Johnny Paycheck) was on his dime.
One look at some of Hobart's titles will clue you to the cut of his flannel. With weepers like "I Walked In While He Was Changing Your Mind," "Make Me Hate You Before You Go," and "Happy Birthday Broken Heart," and rousers like "Nothin' But Nothin"' and "Between a Rock and a Heartache," you just know that Hobart couldn't be any more authentic if he was giving this thing away in boxes of Breeze. Rex Hobart is an honest-to-God throwback to a time when country music meant pedal steel and fiddle and turn that guitar down a notch, son, you need heart not volume. If you're looking for real, Rex is the deal.
