Jimmy Tremor (nee Gardner), leader of North Carolina’s hell-bent hillbilly rockers the Tremors, has ensured that they varied little over the course of 10 years and five CDs. There was and is no need. A backwoods Americana visionary, Tremor was onto something good from the start. The feral cats howling at the fractured, midnight blood moon, from the red clay tobacco roads of America’s lost hick-dimension, have stayed true to Jimmy’s original plan, and on Old-Fashioned Hillbilly Feud, we’re the beneficiaries!
There has been one change, and a hale one, at that. The Tremors have grown more confident and able with each exuberant waxing. Drummer Stretch Armstrong and slap-bassman Slim Perkins wreak one of the surest and most frenetically rollicking rhythms on present offer. The two rock-ribbed stalwarts have been at Tremor’s elbow since 2004 debut Scourge of the South.
Tremor’s own jittery, impassioned, psychologically-tilted hayseed implorings — punctuated now and again by strangled yelps recalling Hasil Adkins — and white lightning-speed treble note squallings reach ever-higher plateaus of backwoods psychosis. (When he stalks the bass strings, you’d swear that Grady Martin had lost his religion.)
Much strength lies in the songs themselves. Most of these feral, amphetemine juggernauts eclipse the finish line in less than two minutes. Their minimalist constructions allow for unloosed rocketship delivery.
If you haven’t yet dug The Tremors’ trademark moonshine-gassed, streamliner boogie, people get ready. The train is comin’!
Recommended tracks: “Old Fashioned Hillbilly Feud,” “High Time,” “Why I Cry,” “Cabin Fever,” “Wreck of the Old 97”
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/
VIDEO: http://youtu.be/E3WMVxj7cnA (“100 Proof Blues Boogie,” from previous CD)
The Tremors – Old-Fashioned Hillbilly Feud (Brain Drain)
Reviewed by DC Larson
