Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires
Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down to the Southside of Town)
Don Giovanni Records
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When six of the tracks on an album have titles ending in an exclamation point, you might suspect that the performer is a tad excitable, which is definitely the case with the electrifying third outing of Lee Bains III. Ripping through his songs like the rowdier little brother of the dudes in Drive-By Truckers, this Birmingham, Alabama native infuses crunchy Southern rock with strong shots of punk’s raw energy and rap’s attention to words. “I Can Change!,” “I Heard God!,” “Black & White Boys” and other incendiary tunes supply a jolt of purifying righteous noise, but also offer plenty of food for thought, touching on issues of race, class and other difficult subjects without resorting to glib generalities. Incorporating a sound clip from a 2016 Black Lives Matter rally and accompanied by a reading list (Angela Davis, Allen Ginsberg, Jean-Paul Sartre, et al.), this 17-track, nearly hour-long epic is exhilarating, exhausting and well worth checking out!