Here we go again…
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[4.00]
David Sheffieck: I appreciate that this taught me an alternate meaning for the word “throwdown,” one that seems about as legitimate as any other.
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: I’m on record as being no fan of “bro country,” but that’s not how I read this record. This is the rookie-team version of Aldean, Bryan and Church’s “The Only Way I Know,” with Brantley Gilbert in the Eric Church role, full of tasty power chords and an attitude that’s all Hank Jr. (Gilbert’s Just As I Am is arguably a better Eric Church album than The Outsiders, too.) The vocals offered up by Moore and Rhett could really be from anyone; the key is Gilbert’s nasty growl, which gets almost every one of his songs over. I won’t try to sell you that this is great, but just like “The Only Way I Know,” I love it even though I recognize that maybe I shouldn’t. Few country singles this year will have this much energy, either.
[8]
Patrick St. Michel: More songs about drinking in the wild and yapping about women.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Jason Aldean’s enabler writes nine more dirt road anthems, one of which, “Bottoms Up,” went top twenty pop despite echoing Michael Jackson’s “Give In To Me” and sounding like it could conceivably be about Gilbert’s chick using him for dildo experiments after beers. Actually, women are for sex, guys for love, and guitars for Steve Perry impersonations. He convinced me on all three, but he doesn’t need to sound like an avocado constipated him. Perhaps that’s why he needs the bros.
[5]
Anthony Easton: I would say that this race to the bottom of fauxaggro boy stunting was beneath all of them, like puppies wrestling and thinking they were wolves, or the obvious slumming of Waylon Jennings in “Dukes of Hazzard” without the irony or without Daisy (who was smarter than anyone else on that show). I could do the whole economic anxiety/working class threatened by urbanity style, but with jive like this, it would be more effort than these assholes have put in making this track–and this is from someone who still thinks Luke Bryan singing “shake it for me” was a work of genius.
[1]
Megan Harrington: There is something super spooky about the way these men start this song. I realize that this is a party anthem (and it gets there by the chorus), but that eerie ringing guitar and a party in the woods sounds like Blair Witch: Nashville. There’s a strong current of aggression that runs through “Small Town Throwdown” and it’s deeply unpleasant.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Can you believe that when Bon Jovi went country, they went the flannel-hearted route? It’s still amazing to me, more so whenever I heard this Coors-soaked slice of backwoods hair metal. This sounds like eight kinds of modern rock, and I support every sleazy, canny appropriation.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: You know how on The X Factor the producers will throw together a bunch of random semi-finalists who weren’t good enough — actually, it’s usually more “aren’t nearly as marketable” — on their own, hoping their fanbases will generate some combinatorial hit? This is the country version. Sometimes I wonder if the Nashville machine generates infinite variations on tailgates that don’t quite happen so rumble-inducing or tan-legged in real life because these guys would flounder without constant parties where they’re cranked improbably up. A bro bubble, if you will.
[2]