JOHN DOE AND THE SADIES > Country Club

Updated:

August 31, 2021 8:50 am

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Label: YEP ROC
[Rating: 3 STARS]

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This very playable record is also a gutsy one-not because either John Doe or the Sadies take up straight country on it, which might be expected, but because together, they dare to turn to country songs and sounds outside the straight-jacketed confines typically associated with twang turns by punk rockers. This is not one more Child’s Garden of, angry, vaguely Cash-like Murder and Booze Songs. There are knowing, and I daresay loving renderings of Roger Miller’s “Husbands and Wives” (with vibraphone, yet), a jazzy, countrypolitan turn on the Willie Nelson/Ray Price song “Night Life,” and even Tammy Wynette’s “Till I Get It Right,” lean, but not stripped bare. Doe sings with authority and smooth finesse; in an alternate universe he might have had Chris Isaak’s career as easily as the one he’s preferred. A handful of new songs in similar mode update the proceedings.