Bury Me In My Boots (Big Machine, 2016)
The Cadillac Three
Reviewed by Dan MacIntosh
The group reveals its funny side through "Ship Faced," a song that combines lyrical drinking references with seaworthy terminology. The act can also get serious, though, in the sneakiest ways. "White Lightning" speaks to the intoxicating effect of powerful, true love. Yet for one of the lyric's noteworthy analogies, they sing, "Faster than you die when you take too many pills." That one will sober you up, quick.
There are plenty of drinking songs, which seem to be mandatory for all albums released to the country market nowadays. The song titles about say it all, as with "Drunk Like You" and "Buzzin'."
The aforementioned "The South" paints the American South as though it were some kind of modern day paradise. Country music is still calling out for a much more balanced view of this region, however. Where is an album like Tom Petty's 1985 "Southern Accents"? On its song "Rebels," Petty sang, "With one foot in the grave/And one foot on the pedal." The song begins with an altogether unflattering view of this Southern man: "Honey don't walk out/I'm too drunk to follow." Rock has just done a better job of revealing varying (and sometimes not so positive) perspectives on Southern life. REM even named an album "Fables of the Reconstruction," which more than suggested that all was not well in post-Civil War America - particularly in the South. Ah, but if you listen to country radio, you'll be brainwashed everything is peaches and cream. Don't believe it, though.
With all that said, the album (and the genre's) one-sided-ness takes nothing away from the fine Southern sounds The Cadillac Three create; albeit, while we wait for mainstream country to finally give us the good, bad and ugly.
CDs by The Cadillac Three



©Country Standard Time • Jeffrey B. Remz, editor & publisher • countrystandardtime@gmail.com
About • Copyright • Newsletter • Our sister publication Standard Time