Waco Brothers – Freedom And Weep

So what’s it like to listen to the Waco Brothers as a guy? Do you want to be them? Do you want to take them on? Do you want to drink them under the table? Or do they scare you, too?

My fandom has always been complicated by fascination with all that fearsome, noisy manpower lurching forcefully in my direction. I feel positively dainty, and so awestruck I want to cover my head, or maybe that’s just for the flying beer. Wacos records are a different experience entirely. I love them for their minds. Stripped of their circus-from-hell performance personae, these are thoughtful people, even occasionally tender. There’s genuine wit, not to mention real poetry, beneath all that frustration-driven rowdiness.

Having started as a lark, an outlet for Jon Langford’s abiding interest in country music after the Mekons’ mid-’80s dabbling, over the last three records the Wacos seem ultimately to have taken themselves seriously as a band, and to have concerned themselves more with their songwriting craft, all without sacrificing any of their burly energy.

The themes on Freedom And Weep are familiar for Wacos fans: Working folks are being trammeled, their dignity is fighting for its life, and fat cats are to blame. This year’s motif is the Bush regime, and its X-treme Christian and corporate underpinnings. Cryptic allusions to loaves and fishes, drugs and guns thread through the Armageddon-like “Chosen One”, while “Missing Link” takes on trumped-up justifications for war.

The most country-influenced songs fall to punk-rocker Dean Schlabowski, whose “Lincoln Town Car” is an angry class struggle. There’s also romance, in “I’ve Come A Long Way” and “Fantasy”, a grim portrait of life on the road. But in the end, there’s comfort in Mark Durante’s invitation to “Join The Club”. At least we’re all in this together. Let the beer fly where it may.