by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
After many years of deranged “egg punk” and lo-fi recordings that sound as ramshackle as can be, Nashville Spodee Boy took an unexpected turn and made a collection of sordid cowboy songs. Sure they are rooted in Southern fried alcohol and drug use with characters you certainly would be best to avoid, but the project has never sounded better. This one howls in the vein of The Gun Club and The Birthday Party, and the fidelity has been kicked up a notch to boot. Aggressive and full of whiskey soaked punk disdain, the four songs that comprise Rides Again… are among Spodee Boy’s best, not just in concept but in execution. Make no mistake, these songs rip with an outlaw intensity.
The feeling of cowboy culture in the most unhinged of ways is captured on “Dress The Part,” a song that grooves on a clamoring bass line that wouldn’t sound out place in a Spray Paint song. The whole thing is dense and abrasive, but the noise only adds to the structure, never overpowering the warped and slurred twang of it as Spodee Boy’s Connor Cummins does his best melodic noise-punk howl, barking out the our options, “ride, walk… crawl.” You’ve got to get where you’re going somehow, it just depends on how inebriated you may be. The video, directed by Blair Tramel, features found footage moving forward and reverse for a nice disorienting stumble between cowboys, the open road… and bikers without bikes.