Horseshoes & Hand Grenades

Album Review

Country music is known for cornball wordplay, and sometimes for genuinely clever humor. Sarcastic wit, on the other hand, is likely to get you barred from the Grand Ole Opry, not that they care much about the Grand Ole Opry in Texas, which is where Trent Summar (and most of his fellow country-rock wiseguys) come from. So after he blows the barn doors down with his hard-rocking (and hilarious) title track, he happily goes on to have his way with the Bakersfield sound on "Love You," which features a bridge constructed out of a mariachi version of the "Ring of Fire" guitar lick, and to put the "twang" in "twangerrific" with the muscular "Hayride," and to force bluesy rockabilly into the service of one of the nastier kiss-off songs in recent memory. For humor, the pièce de résistance is his version of the George Jones classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which starts off as a respectful but lackluster cover and then suddenly morphs into breakneck hardcore punk rock on the chorus. For pure lusftul honky tonk fun, the pièce de résistance is the leering "She Knows What to Do (With a Saturday Night)." And for you Future Farmers of America, the key track is the funny (but also really quite sweet) "Pink John Deere." If you don't enjoy this album, it's probably because you take yourself too seriously.