November 12, 2018

The Bottle Rockets Spin Charm Out of the Mundane

“Bit Logic” is the perfect mix of rock and country sounds.

Album Review

The Bottle Rockets
Bit Logic
Bloodshot

Fronted by Brian Henneman, The Bottle Rockets have been spinning vivid tales of everyday life’s ups and downs since the early 90s with wit, empathy, and wisdom. The excellent “Bit Logic” finds their tasty brew of rock and country percolating nicely, offering the perfect setting for Henneman’s charming, down-home voice. But the inspired material is where the St. Louis quartet really excels. The stomping “Bad Time to Be an Outlaw” laments the state of Nashville sounds today (“My music’s good, but my income sucks”), while the twangy “Knotty Pine” celebrates a humble refuge (“That room gives me hugs/It’s better than drugs”), and “Doomsday Letter” gets funky to refute negative thinking (“Whatever I can do to keep my chin up is a damn good thing”). Some big star with good taste should cover one of the Bottle Rockets’ fine songs and generate some royalties for the boys.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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