On his band’s debut disc, Bobby Bare Jr. does his best to ensure that he won’t be confused with his country legend father. From beginning to end, Boo-Tay is a noisy, raucous, crude, and utterly delightful rock album, packed full of more self-loathing and negativity than a month’s worth of “Daria” episodes.
“Nothin’ Better To Do”, the disc’s first actual song (the first half-minute of the CD consists of a chorus singing the title over and over), establishes the album’s recurrent themes of low self-esteem and unrequited love with its refrain, “You dig me/More than I dig myself/I’m in love with you/’Cause I got nothin’ better to do.” These themes are more deeply explored on other selections, such as “You Blew Me Off (It Turned Me On)” and “Faker”.
The true highlight of the disc, though, is “Soggy Daisy”, in which Bare runs down the list of a nursing home’s residents, seven of whom are killed by salmonella poisoning. There’s a poignant message about valuing our elders in the song, but simply being introduced to these characters makes it worth revisiting.
A hidden track at the end of the CD begins with an answering machine message from an ex-girlfriend that is so funny it has to be real, and ends with a goofy ballad about Bare’s obsession with said ex.
Some of Bare’s songwriting is a bit cheesy, to say the least. His voice is good enough, though, that he can deliver lines as goofy as “Red and blue make purple/And purple without red/Is how I feel” and pull it off. And anyway, eloquent lyrics would be about as at home on this CD as optimism and disco samples.
